Web Design & Hosting

We can build your site from start to finish or give a lackluster site a makeover. We can help you to choose and purchase your domain name; plan your site structure and the look and feel of your site; and help you with guidelines for preparing your content for the web.

The process

• Specifications - The first step is to meet to discuss the purpose and goals of the web site; colors and layout; site features and functionality; and site structure and links.
• Proposal - We write a proposal with detailed specifications for your project. Once the proposal has been accepted, we create a temporary placeholder for your site, with logo and contact information.
• Design Comp - The design comp allows you to evaluate the proposed design before coding begins — we upload the comp to a password protected directory, where only you and those you designate can see and comment on the design.
• Site Development - Once a design is approved and content has been delivered, the real site development work begins — with ActiveCollab, you can log and track the progress, and securely upload any files associated with your project
• Launch - When all aspects of the site have been completed and approved, the site is uploaded to your web directory, and the site goes live.

Search Engine Positioning

We work with clients to develop strategies for optimizing search engine visibility:

• Keyword-rich content - The most important aspect of establishing and maintaining good ranking with the search engines, is having lots of keyword-rich content on your site. Most internet searches are for copy — if you or someone in your organization is a good writer, featuring articles on your site is extremely helpful in boosting traffic.
• Coding and site structure - There are numerous techniques for optimizing code for search engines — creative use of specific tags; including keywords in file and directory names; and using text links rather than graphics (search engine software can't follow text on graphics.)
• Link Popularity - One of the primary was search engines (particularly Google) ranks web sites, is through measuring link popularity — the number of other web sites that have links to yours. Each inbound link is seen as a 'vote' for your site — we will create links to you on several web sites, and help you to identify other sites that may be willing to link to you.
• Google's AdWords - AdWords are great for increasing visibility, and for many small businesss, the cost of buying AdWords can be extremely low.

Client Training

The prospect of having to pay a web designer for all site changes can be daunting for many small businesses and nonprofits, making it difficult for many to keep web sites up-to-date. HTML was initially created to be accessible to non-technical people — it has since evolved and become much more complex since the early days of the web, but basic text and image editing are still very easy, and can be learned by virtually anyone, and fairly quickly.

Email Services

We will create email addresses and help you to receive forwarded mail in MS Outlook or Mozilla's Thunderbird.

Integration with Google Domain Applications

Google offers a suite of free applications that can be integrated with any domain — domain name email (routed through Google's phenomenal Gmail); user created calendars, for private viewing, viewing within a group, or embedded in a web page; a tool to add simple pages to your site without using HTML; and a feature that allows you to create and share documents and spreadsheets, and publish those to the web if you choose.

Integration with ActiveCollab Project Management software

With ActiveCollab, our clients can securely track the development of their web sites at any time, and upload files and images related to a project.

Blog integration

Blogs can provide clients a way to easily keep a site updated with fresh content — once the blog is integrated with a web site, no coding is needed to write posts. It's as easy as typing email — type your post, hit submit, and your post is immediately published to your web site.

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