What do you need to have a website?
Affordable Website Development is our primary service, our specialty! Website design and development can be very complicated and there is a considerable learning curve as you begin to discover the web from the webmaster's side. We're here to help you with consultation and guidance every step of the way, and to take the burden off wherever we can while empowering you with as much control over your website as you would like to have. To be sure, one of the wonderful advantages of working with The Designsmith is our propensity to provide consultation and guidance at no extra cost! Our package prices are all focused on the real work of designing and building your website.
Our web development centers on the structuring of a website that fits your company and branding, fits your marketing goals, and fits your budget while addressing your target audience in terms they can quickly understand and digest to make an honest appraisal of you and connect to further your communication and create a business engagement, ie $$$.
to have a website you need AT LEAST THESE 5 THINGS:
- A Domain Name. This is the address of your website that appears in the address bar of the browser. Ours is TheDesignsmith.com as you can see in the address bar above. In effect, you rent the name from a Domain Registrar like Network Solutions or GoDaddy. There are many registrars and there is no considerable difference between them as far as acquiring a name, but their costs vary widely. GoDaddy charges roughly $20 for a .com name per year while Network Solutions charges around $45 for the same thing. We tend to use GoDaddy more often.
- A Hosting System. This is essentially the computer where the files of your website are stored. This special computer must be able to read and execute your programmed files, and it should be solidly connected to a main artery of the internet. The system farm should have backups and redundencies as well as other creative protection to make sure that your website is always available to web surfers. Naturally, we offer a wonderful hosting system equipped to handle all your website needs.
- Hyper-Text Markup files. These files describe the look and content of your website to the browser which downloads and displays it to the surfers. HTM files can be built without programming, mixed with programming, or created by programming; but in the end it is the html that your visitors see drawn into their browser. Creating these files is what we do best by integrating beautiful graphics, cascading sytles and smart programming!
- A Database. The days when you could manage a website without a database are gone. Today the website draws pages by pulling information from the database and combining it with the HTML markup so that the visitor sees the pages exactly how you want them to.
- Security Certificate. At a minimum you will want to do any communication over secure socket layers (SSL) which encrypt the data during transmission. Today the whole website is delivered over https ( secure ) paths as a rule. Websites are subject to assault in many cases, and often for no apparent reason. So we recommend a few additions to your website outlay to include a firewall, monitoring, and backup whenever your budget can afford it.
In order for us to build your website we need to know what it is going to say and do. We've found the easiest way for you to tell us is by creating a flowchart or outline that names each page and describes the content. We're good at presuming the details, so a general description is good enough for us to give you a reasonable estimate. We also realize that this task is a show-stopper for many, so we offer services to work with you to put it together - contact us or look here to find out more.
Primary Elements of a Website:
- The Template. We build websites for ease of updating and expansion by using templates that are broken up and inserted into each page of the site to assure consistency across the project. The template gives you the 'look and feel' of your website, the navigation, the head and foot, and much more that is a necessary part of each page. We often design these templates ourselves but to save money for some clients we can also pick from the many pre-designed templates available around the web and integrate our programming and content into one of them.
- The Public Area. When someone types your website name into their browser address bar they see your homepage of your public area. The public area is simply not the private area and includes any part of the site that the public can reach through navigation from another public page or by clicking through from the results of a search engine like Google or Bing.
- The Content Management System. Most websites are programmed to interact with a database and to administer the page content a site owner uses an interface. This interface is a set of pages referred to as the content management system (CMS) and it is not connected to the public area. For example, if your website has a shopping cart with lists of items the public can browse, the CMS would be used to keep those items updated with the correct image, price, etc.
See Also these Website Design & Development Pages:
Website Cost Estime?
Contact us today with your website ideas and we'll get you a free estimate! If you have an outline or flowchart you can send us that to get the conversation going. Or if you would like us to visit and discuss what might be a good outline for your site we'll be happy to set up a meeting. Or a phone call - whatever works for you.
