Whether you're looking to set up a simple personal site, a dynamic web portal for your business, or simply make revisions to a pre-existing site, I can provide quality design at inexpensive rates.
When you have a site designed, it should be done right the first time. You shouldn't need to pay a "webmaster" every time you need two sentences added. If your site is going to require regular updates, it should be designed with this in mind so that you can make them yourself with no technical knowledge.
I specialize in dynamic design using php, javascript, and css-based layouts. Ideally, once your site is active, content updates can be easily handled by you via a simple administrative interface rather than by a webmaster.
Features
- Simple, Accessible Design
- In the context of web design, accessibility is a measure of how easy it is to access and understand a page's content. While this may seem relatively straightforward, accessibility is much different for a living document such as a web page than it would be for print media. Web pages can be experienced in a variety of ways, through a number of browsers, via wireless devices such as PDAs and phones, speech browsers for the blind, and indexing robots. If a page is not designed correctly, it may not be accessible to the blind, may render incorrectly in browsers such as Opera of Firefox, or may not be indexed properly and thus not show up in internet searches. There are many elements and features which cannot be displayed or can be turned off in your browser. Javascript, stylesheets, frames, and even images. If a page is designed correctly, the content does not suffer when those elements are disabled.
- 100% Custom Websites - from scratch
- I do not use prefabricated templates, unappealing stock photos, or design software such as Frontpage or Dreamweaver. All websites I design are completely custom, totally unique.
- Forward-compatible code
- I code in XHTML, an XML-compatible language which not only enhances accessibility, but also ensures that your site will display properly in the web browsers of tomorrow.
- Spam-Proof email posting
- When posting email addresses online, spam is a major concern. Any time an email address shows up online, it is vulnerable to email harvesting bots, programs which search the internet for email addresses which are compiled into databases, sold, and spammed relentlessly. There are many techniques for disguising your email address and harassing spam-bots so that the address you post remains spam-free.
- Customized RSS Feeds
- I can also create a RSS Feed for your site. RSS is a technology quickly gaining in popularity. Using RSS, you can easily syndicate your content and make it available to other sites and to anyone with a RSS Reader.
Portfolio
- Beads Louise
A small bead shop in Buena Vista, Colorado. Their site includes pages they can easily update, a calendar, and a custom online inventory system.- Lake County, Colorado government website
The Lake County government wanted a multi-department site that they could easily update with separate permission structures for each department. They also wanted a photo and video gallery, custom database for the assessor's department, multiple calendars, and a user configurable per-department contact directory.- Kentucky Furniture Wholesale
A wholesale furniture company located in Lexington, Kentucky.
Pricing
There are three main costs associated with establishing a web site: Domain Name, Hosting, and Design.
- Domain Name
- If you already have a domain name, great! If you do not, and you want your site to be hosted at your own domain, for example PablosMexicanRestaurant.com or XYZautoParts.net, you will need to purchase a domain name. Domains typically cost $35/year, although I can get you free domain registration should you purchase hosting with the company I use.
- Hosting
- If you want to have a web site, it must be hosted with someone. Should you have a host with whom you're happy, I can certainly work with you. If not, you'll find that hosting prices vary greatly, from free to hundreds of dollars per month, although the free hosts generally force you to place ugly advertisments or pop-ups on the site. After having tried many hosts, I've found a very reliable one which costs only $6.95/month, or less should you purchase hosting for over one year.
- Design
- This is my part. The design is the construction of the site, which may include entry of content, organization of layout, drafting of graphics, and design of the database should one exist.
Pricing the design of a website can be complicated, as there are many factors to take into account. The ultimate factor in affecting pricing is how many hours it will take to create the site. Factors include the amount of content (number of pages), graphic work, and amount of programming for interactivity.