Greetings and welcome to all of our new readers! I hope you find
this newsletter to be of help to your business and personal
endeavors!
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The Website Process (cont.)
Part Two - Development
Ok, so you've met with your web designers, or perhaps even a few of
them, and you've chosen one. Now its time for you to provide your
copy and other design notes to the designer.

A good designer will keep their clients up to date. Over the next
few weeks you'll probably hear from him/her quite often. If you
don't, you may want to ask what's going on. Many designers require
a payment up-front to cover their startup costs, and you'll need to
be reassured that you didn't just give your money away.

Development techniques vary widely. Depending upon what you decided
to do with your website in the design stage, your designer may have
to contract out certain portions. While some designers are great at
coding an entire website, most of the 'good ones' are more
specialized in a certain area. If you require Flash, and your
designer doesn't know it, or at least not good enough to produce
what you need, they'll hire someone who can do it proficiently and
professionally. They'll then incorporate that into the rest of the
site.

There are many programs on the market for developing websites. Some
designers use Microsoft Front Page, others use Cold Fusion,
HomeSite, Adobe PageMaker, Dreamweaver, or a multitude of other
available editors. Whatever the designer uses, the purpose should
be clean code. If they tell you they are using Microsoft Word, be
wary. While Word may produce a readable page, the code will be
horrific and slow-loading. You'll lose customers.

During the development phase of your project, ask the designer for
the URL used in testing. If available, you can watch your site in
the process of being created. Many designers start out with a
template and then start modifying it to fit the clients needs.
Refresh a few times a day and you'll see it coming together.

As the website development winds to a close, you should be in
contact with your designer often. They should provide you with a
URL (if they haven't already) and you should start looking through
the site. Mention any misspellings, color changes, and any other
characteristics about the site that you want changed. Make sure the
aesthetics of the site are the way you like, verify the content, and
click on everything! Point out any inconsistencies and broken links
before your site goes public.

Consider pages that are not done or that have an 'under
construction' to be unlinked, or at least have a date on them of
when they will be available. Customers that see information missing
will most likely go to another site where the information they seek
is available.

Major changes may incur additional fees. As long as the designer
stuck with the original idea that was portrayed during the design
stage, you'll be ok. But if you see something after the meeting on
another website that you want, don't be upset if there are
additional costs.

The average website (10 pages or so) shouldn't take more than 20-30
days from start to finish. If special scripts or other programming
is required, it may take longer. E-Commerce sites could take
several months, depending on your product line and shopping cart
software.

Next newsletter we'll look at the Maintenance Phase of a website.

If you need a website for your business or have an idea that you'd
like to put to work, call us. Lighthouse Technologies has over 7
years of Internet design and development.
www.techlh.com
--------------------

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February Resolutions
According to thecounter.com (full link at end of article), screen
resolutions are creeping upwards. With bigger monitors and flat-
screen resolution increasing, its no wonder. Bigger monitors give
the user more 'real estate' for their icons and browser.

With more of an area to display, the old idea of creating all of
your pages in 640x480 is long gone. The days of designing for
800x600 may be on the way out, too. But not just yet. Baby boomers
are getting to the age of dimming eyesight, and even the new high-
res monitors won't help with that small text.

If you've designed your site for 640x480 resolution, move up. Come
be with the rest of us in the year 2004. If you aren't sure, design
for 800x600.

If you have questions, or are unsure of your current website's
design resolution, contact me. I'll personally help you out.

article stats: http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2004/February/res.php
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Thanks for reading.

Will Hanke
Lighthouse Technologies
www.techlh.com