http://www.canadianlegal.org

…

Enough questions, here is the solution… in situation where you’re redirecting using php, and white space after your closing php tag (?>) can mess your script up, so check twice! The devil is in the details

–The Calgary Geek

How much work am I willing to do?

The biggest question you have to answer is how much work you’re willing to do.  It goes without saying that if you nothing about website design, then the work involved would be learning about how a website is made and what you should do with it once you’ve made it.  Do you know how to read and write basic web code(HyperText Markup Language? CSS? Javascript?) If not the learning curve can be a bit daunting, especially if you dont want to end up with a site like this one: http://www.raft.org/ Ultimately, before you decide you’re going to hand code your own website, be sure to anlyse how much time it will take to do versus the opportunity cost of not hiring a developer.

How much am I willing to spend?

Ok, so maybe building it yourself is not the most efficient use of your time, so maybe you’ve decided you’re going to hire a developer.  Developers as it seems are as varied as there are colors in the rainbow.  We each have our specilities, some only have functional programming experience, some only have design experience, and some (like myself *cough*) have both.  Unfortunatley with that variablity means that you will also be quoted just about every price under the sun!  There will be people who will be willing to do a website for you for 500.00 or less.. although I wouldnt recommend that route (not just out of pure self-interest).  Did I mention http://www.raft.org/ ? That’s a great example of what 500.00 buys you these days.

Ok! So we’ve cleared up that cheap is not the way to go… Your website is often the first impression a customer will have of your company.  Even if your product line is inexpensive, do you really want to come off as cheap? Of course not, no company would want that.

The trick is finding the happy median between design excellence (The kind marketing companies charge over $25,000.00 for) and economy (let’s not break the bank). On average, and depending on who you go with you should be spending between 3000 and 15000 on your website (depending on size and features of course) for a professional to do the job, anything less and you run the risk of getting a sub-standard site, more for unneeded buracratic nightmares.

What features does my website need?

Need being the operative word here… say you’re a convience store and you want your customers to have a quick and easy way of getting ahold of you. Does that mean you need to drop 25,000.00 on a full on eCommerce site with all the bells and whistles? I would hope not.  For most small businesses you can get away with a simple static website if your content never changes, or a simple wordpress blog site if you’re going to need to make changes.

Do you want to continue to pay your developer every time you make a change or just do it yourself?

This question almost goes back to the “how much work am I willing to do category” but with a twist… the reason you need to ask yourself this question is to decide on whether or not your website will have a content management system pretty much summing up the point of this article.  How crutial is it to have a CMS? Ulitmately, it’s not.. If you’re an HTML guru, you can make the changes to the site directly in code, or if you have buckets of money and dont mind paying someone else to do it for you, you can go that route as well.  Ultimately though if you’re going to want to maintain good value on your investment, you’re not going to want to have to keep paying someone else, OR spend too much of your own time doing it; this is where content management systems come into play.

For large businesses or governement websites, a full featured content management system makes sense, it allows you to make any number of changes to your site without sacrificing the originality of your brand that you might lose in a WordPress CMS type of solution, whereas a WordPress CMS solution will allow you to add new content (not necessarily template changes**) easily and at a much lower cost than a full CMS system, so again it comes down to time, money, and commitment

–Terrence Ward, BSc (Hons.)

Starts at:

$3000.00

• Includes 40 hours of developer time to setup and configure your blog site
• Includes training on how to use site, change options, and upload content
• Your first year of hosting is included (a 180.00 value, 15.00 / mo after first year)
• Your first year of domain fees are included (a 15.00 value, 15.00 / year after first year)
• Imagination is your only limit to the number of pages you upload
• Does not include editing of WordPress software files or custom graphics
• Template and graphic design customization as per original scope document
• 75.00 / hr rate for sites requires more than 40 hours of labor

Starts at:

$1500.00

• Includes 10 hours of developer time to setup and configure your blog site
• Includes training on how to use site, change options, and upload content
• Your first year of hosting is included (a 180.00 value, 15.00 / mo after first year)
• Your first year of domain fees are included (a 15.00 value, 15.00 / year after first year)
• Imagination is your only limit to the number of pages you upload
• Does not include editing of WordPress software files or custom graphics

Starts at

$7500.00

• Includes 33 hours of developer time to design your site layout and populate your content
• Your first two years of hosting is included (a 360.00 value, 15.00 / mo after first year)
• Your first two years of domain fees are included (a 30.00 value, 15.00 / year after first year)
• unlimited pages
• content managed by custom application running in Microsoft Windows
• Objects editable by management application (included with price)
• Menu Navigation
• Pages Content
• Site Widgets (information boxes on pages)
• Front Page Media (adverts and focal image area)
• Optional Modules (+$500.00 ea)
• News Articles
• Event Calendar
• Corporate Directory
• Employment Opportunities
• custom modules can be built on request (+75.00 / hr for custom modules)

Like most companies, once the initial website is done, updates usually follow for the first month or two, but then generally fall by the wayside as a lower priority item, eventually ceasing altogether.

Google doesn’t do lazy

There really is no mystery to search engine optimization! The simple truth of it is, if you do not update your content often, your content becomes stagnent and less relevant.  In the back of you mind you know this, but more to the point Google knows this, and this is why your inital stellar search ranking has slowly left you wondering on page 5!

The easy way to get top a top 10 listing in Google

Keep it current and relevant and your listing will naurally outrank your competition, you may not beat all of your competition because their content may be more relevant than your own, but that is the beauty of competition… Content is King! The company with the best content, and friends of that content wins the best positioning.

Friends of Content

An easy way of increasing your chance of a top ranking are to have other companies with relevant content to your targeted search area link to you. In the end, a lot of ranking high in Google can be attributed to not only luck, but with whom you associate as well.  Take a look at the link farm strategies of the 90′s… they were very quickly made obsolete as Google learned how to rank the relevance of the interlinking sites.

The drastic changes D.A. Watt consulting made to make it back to the top 10

They had to rethink how the treated their content.  By having The Calgary Geek completely rearchitect their site using a content management system they now have complete control over the content on their site, and their ability to update it.  As a result, instead of being on page 5 for their most important keywords “Legal Survey” They are currently sitting in the #4 position on the first page!

Way to go DAWATT! That’s the way to set the bar for your competition.

 Updating a dated design

While we were at it, we also took the chance to completely redesign the look and feel of the website, the result as you can see is a dramatic transformation bringing their design back to current trends.

http://www.dawatt.com/web

// To unixtime

(DateTime.UtcNow - new DateTime(1970,1,1,0,0,0)).TotalSeconds;

//To datetime

(new DateTime(1970,1,1,0,0,0)).AddSeconds(unixtimestamp)

As 2011 marks the 30th Anniversary of DeVry University in Calgary, all of the 2011 graduates were welcomed to attend.  Among attendance was the Calgary Geek, Terrence Ward (http://www.mycalgarygeek.com).  A self taught savant of all things code, he made the decision to return to school and gain accreditation for his craft for which he has been practicing for over 10 years.

When asked what drove him back into school he replied, “I have been coding a long time now, but it has been difficult to get people to take me seriously as a developer.  It’s absolutely amazing how important this little piece of paper is in the province of Alberta.  When I first started school, I didn’t understand what the big deal about a piece of paper was… having made the journey now, I finally understand.  I may have been a good enough developer in the past, but armed with my new education, I am renewed and look forward to applying my new knowledge to my field.  Attending convocation early has only motivated me further to finish my degree more so.”

news@mycalgarygeek.com

–Update: Terrence has finished his studies and has been granted an Honours Bachelor’s degree in Computer Information Systems.

What is WordPress?

WordPress is a piece of web software that you can use to create a blog website.  WordPress is an opensource project that is contributed to by litterally hundreds of developers and community volunteers.

How much does WordPress cost?

Well, nothing really if you’re savvy with the internet and can correctly install it on your own hosting account.  If is freely avaiable for download at http://wordpress.org/download/ and in fact there is excellent documetation on the website to help people get started.  Granted, you might also need to have a graphics program, and learn how to edit wordpresses template files, but then again, nothing is really free is it?

If internet hosting and web technologies are not your thing, we do offer a setup service for those who would like us to do it for them.

What kind of website can WordPress make?

Well, that all depends on your imagination.  There is a plethora of plugins available that can extend wordpress, but ultimately keeping it in perspective, WordPress is a blog website.   For medium and larger companies who want very professional outward facing marketing, a blog website can make a great addition to their existng webstrategy… but wouldnt’t make it as *the* primary web strategy, whereas smaller companies could probably get away with just a blog website with some customizations as they are figureing out which strategy they’d eventually like to take.  An exception to this of course being a wordpress website that is professionally designed by a developer.  We have the ability to adapt the wordpress platform so much that the forward facing appearance of the site is that of a professionally content managed website versus a simple blog website.

Read: WordPress is a good inexpensive solution for a quick information/blog or business presence website, unless you’re willing to put in the work or hire a developer to do the work for you.

Although it is getting easier to install this type of software,it can still be a pretty daunting task.  If you don’t know what you’re doing, it’s probably better to hire a professional to set it up and provide you with training.

-The Calgary Geek