Assessment

My current workload includes several parish web sites and para-church ministries, some of which I am highly involved with. I also have several commercial clients for whom I do web site maintenance for on a regular basis. Therefore, my time constraints will dictate the work I'm able to take on at any given time.

As a Christian, I try keep the highest ethics and principles and expect the same from my clients.

Overall Cost for most sites

No matter who does your web site there are certain basic costs that will be part of any personal or small business web site that you will have to budget for. I have noted which costs are billed by us one time and which are independent costs that have to be budgeted. They include:

Web hosting

What is web hosting?. Web hosting is hardware and services used to store, maintain, and present web sites. You'll have to budget anywhere from $5 to $20/month in most cases depending on the requirements of your web site.

There are "free web hosting services" out there, but much of their support is dependent on advertising revenues that either appear on your site or ads that you have to pay for to get rid of.

If you are interested in a stable, professional-looking web site, it is worth shopping about for a good ISP, (Internet Service Provider). Generally, if you have a simple site design that does NOT require the use of database technologies like Cold Fusion or ASP, you'll have to budget about $5 to $10/month for hosting purposes. If you do require these database technologies you will have to budget around $20 to $25/month depending on your needs.

As part of the development process, I will set you up with the lowest cost provider, that meets your needs.

In addition to the basis web design and development of a site, we offer:

• Cold Fusion services
• E-commerce services with PayPal.

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Domain name

What is a domain name? A domain name is a series of alphanumeric strings separated by periods, such as www.mysite.com, that is used to go to your web site on the internet. People type in your domain name into the address box of a web browser in order to go to your web site. The last set of letters after the last "." in a domain name usually represent the type of organization it is.The three main domain endings are:

• .com - which usually represents a company
• .net - which usually represents a network
• .org - which usually represents a organization
  
  newer assignments and their meanings are:
  
  
• .ws - which usually represents a web site
• .biz - which usually represents a small business
• .info - which usually represents a credible resource web site
• .name - which usually represents a personal web site
  

Domain names are distributed to everyone through one of several domain name registrars ON A FIRST-COME-FIRST-SERVE basis.

We'll do the domain name registration process for you as a courtesy and bill you for the number of years you wish to register your domain for.

Just tell us what domain names you would like and we will:

1. Do a search after discussing with you what kind of domain would be best for your site
2. Report back with the available domains
3. Register the domain name you choose among the available domain names we found
4. Coordinate how payment for the domain name will be made.
   Note: Once you buy it, it's yours for good, as long as you keep it registered under your name.
5. Coordinate things with the web hosting company based on your web site needs

Once these five steps are completed, we can start building your web site.

The cost of domain names goes down the more years you register it for.

Development

• About your site
• The process
• Cost

About your site

Web site development is not just slapping a set of web pages together. It involves several steps. The main reason why an individual or business wants a web site presence is because:

• he or she KNOWS they have an audience out on "the net" that could use their products and/or services or
• wants to let others around the world know about themselves, their family, their company, etc.

The goal of a good Web Developer is to help the customer identify his/her overall audience and think of creative ways to pull those customers into their site as well as other potential ones. An important part of the process is establishing a "look and feel" that the customer is satisfied with.

People who visit my dossier of web sites, may think some of the sites I have developed look terrible. That's not important to me, I don't decide "the look and feel". The customer does. A big part of my job is suggesting a "the look and feel" that will meet the customer's need, but at the end, the customer's decision always wins out.

The first step consists of several consultation meetings where we talk over the "who" or "what" of the site. I'll usually have a series of questions for new customers to review and answer. The purpose of these questions is to assist me, and sometimes the customer, in defining their Internet audience and better understand the products and services they want to sell.

The second step is defining what is known as "Content categories". Content categories are the main categories that are on the home page. I will usually work with the customer at this point to assist in developing a "stable" set of content categories. Stable in that, each category itself will have room for expansion from within their respective category.

The third step is for the customer to provide me with any branded corporate logos, pictures, company mission statements and descriptions, product descriptions, service descriptions, etc. These are VERY important, but if these are lacking, I can usually come up with an initial site layout with descriptions via our one on one customer consultations. I also do graphics and corporate logos from scratch, until the customer is satisfied.

Site cost and payment (flexible)

• Web sites are $500.00 to $1000.00 to design and develop.
• Simple sites are about $500.00.
• Add-on's that require Cold Fusion database work are about $100.00 to $400.00 more depending on their complexity.
  
  Payment:
  
  • Without signed agreement: 50% down to start, remainder in installments or when finished.

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Maintenance

Once your web site is up and running, it is inevitable that small to medium to even bigger changes will be desired. This is especially true if you are a small business or startup.

Currently I charge $30.00 - $35.00/web site update when needed. If your web site requires small changes or few changes during the year, this probably is the best way to go.

Usage (rarely needed)

After we have developed a web site to your specifications, you may decide you don't want me to maintain it. For web site designs that I have created, I can't just give the access/FTP parameters to the new person you want to take over. They could easily be my competition. All they would have to do is:

• download my design along with the graphics I created to their PC
• remove/change the text and/or graphics while keeping the graphics they want, then
• re-sell it as their own.

If you prefer someone else to completely "takeover" the site I've developed, you can decide to buy the site out. We would negotiate a "buyout" price for the web site.

To assist you in deciding weather to buy the site out or not, you should ask yourself the following questions:

• How often will I need changes to the web site?
• Will the person taking over the site be reliable/dependable?
• How knowledgeable is the person taking over the site in web design and maintenance?
• Do I really need someone else to takeover the web site, or do I need someone who can just create better graphics for me?