Your Website in Five Steps

I don't like surprises, and I'm sure you don't either. That's why from the get-go, I plan ahead to satisfy your expectations and meet your goals. In step one, I analyze your competition by examining websites that are similar to yours. You point out elements you think are cool. You tell me what you hate. I let you know what works, and explain what's involved. But you don't need to be an expert to know what's visually appealing, what's usable, and what's fun.

Once we know about what the other guys are doing, I get to know what you want to do. I learn about your values, your tastes, and your personality. If you're in the area, let's meet face-to-face. Show me some samples of your work. Bring me into your world.

Finally, we talk "scope." Scope is all about what's feasible within your time and budget constraints. Not everyone needs a database, Flash animations, or RSS feeds. I'll be there every step of the way to help you decide what's possible as well as what's feasible for your project.

Now that we've determined the scope, content, and organization of your website, it's time to design the look and feel. In step three, I mock up a design of two or three pages that are exemplary of most pages in your website. Usually, this means designing your front page and pages the user will see as she drills deeper into your website.

Your website's design is its outer shell, exactly what your users will see and interact with once your website goes live. At this stage, all our abstract efforts earlier on are realized in a visual layout for the first time. You have the opportunity to tweak elements of the design, implement changes, or suggest an entirely different direction for your website's look and feel.

Once you have approved the website's look and feel, I'll get to work wiring up your website. At this point, you can sit back and relax, as the behind-the-scenes web development process is all me.

When I slice apart your website's design and code it up for the web, you can rest assured that your website's markup is efficient, semantic, and search engine friendly. In every website I develop, I adhere to the latest, international World Wide Web Consortium standards, which ensures that your website is accessible to disabled visitors, cross-browser compatible, and future-proof to the web's ever-changing landscape.

By building your website on top of WordPress, a free, open-source content management system, I empower you completely to control your website after it goes live. You can update your content and create new pages whenever you want, from any web browser, and without any web expertise whatsoever.

In the last step in the creation of your website, I make your website accessible to the public at a dotcom all your own. This is called "going live."

I will help you purchase your domain (www.yourwebsite.com) and select an affordable web host so that I can upload your website to your web host's servers. Once I upload your files, your site goes live. From there on out, you will be able to log in to your website from the back end and manage your content through WordPress's easy-to-use administrative interface.