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Guide to Buying a Website
You have decided that you want a new website and you're getting ready to contact a website design company to inquire about their services. Most people in your situation ask the seemingly simple question, "How much for a website?" However, there are so many different ways to create a website that there is no single simple answer to this question. In order to get the best, most accurate answer, you'll need to provide your website designer with more information about your goals. To help you frame those goals we have put together this brief guide to buying a new website.
What you will need
In order to set up a new website, you will need to register a domain name, and you will need to purchase a website hosting service. Then you will need to point the DNS from your domain name registrar to your web host.
Already have a domain name and website hosting? Click here to skip this section.
Basementia Design™ is a website hosting service provider; however we are not yet a domain name registrar at this time. In order to help you get started, we can provide you with the information you will need to point the DNS from your domain name registrar to our website hosting nameservers.
Some domain name registrars also offer website hosting services. Before purchasing website hosting, your should be sure that the service meets the following criteria:
- online file manager
- FTP access
- POP3 mail service
- support for PHP5 or higher
- support for MySQL5 or higher
- phpMyAdmin pre-installed
If you're not sure, or if you can't get an answer, we highly recommend that you sign up for hosting with Basementia™! All our new accounts get the first three months free; and in some instances we will bundle the entire first year of hosting free with the purchase of a new custom website. (Some limitations apply; for example, free hosting is not included with the purchase of website templates or updates for existing websites.)
Website design options
There are many levels of website design, and having a limited budget does not need to prevent your company from having a professional online presence.
Here we ask, what do you want your website to do? (click the question to view our suggestions)
I want my company to have a professional online presence and:
we will require a completely custom site design with detailed control over all aspects of the design process
-OR-
my company would be happy with a template-based website with a few unique customizations
I want prospective customers to be able to send me messages through my website.
I want to sell my company's products through my website
I want to be able to update the website content myself, without learning any programming languages.
I want to create a website for the least possible upfront cost.
Custom Website Design
Contact Basementia Design for a custom quote on building your fully custom website, tailored to your unique specifications. We work with you to develop the theme, the layout, usability, and even the content. Common aspects of a uniquely custom website design are:
Logotype: you probably already have a corporate logo; but whether or not this is the case, your website will probably need your company's name at the top of each page. Most websites have a graphic in the headerbar featuring the company's name in a particular stylized font, written in a specific color, sometimes with additional decorative elements.
Navigation: your website's users need to be able to get from one page to another within your website to access the content there. You may select a horizontal header navigation bar, a vertical sidebar, or both. A site with nested categories may sometimes have "breadcrumb" links on the sub-pages, to allow easy access back to the parent categories. Many sites feature a sidebar on either side of the page, if the site has a great deal of content, or if it is supported by displaying paid advertisements.
Page layout: information is arranged on the page in a user-friendly manner to allow the site's visitors the best possible access to the website's contents. Common design elements considered when creating a page layout are the color and typography of text and backgrounds; color and texture of background images and contrasting visual objects; and usability of navigation and other links.
Designing for the browser: When collaborating with Basementia™ to create your unique website, you will choose either a fixed-width display model, or a fluid display that fills all the available space. There are a number of web-enabled technology devices which people use to browse the Internet, but these devices do not all display the same code in the same way. An ultra-wide-screen desktop monitor has a lot more "real estate" than a smaller CRT monitor or a Netbook (the new miniature portable notebook computers); and any of those can display a lot more information at a time than a portable handheld device such as an Internet-enabled cell phone. In addition to the basic considerations of browser size, there is the complicating factor of different browser software systems. Many people still browse the Internet using software written ten years ago when modern coding standards had not yet been widely implemented. Many other people browse the Internet on handheld devices with limited functionality in certain respects; for example, many cell phone devices do not support CSS, a language which is universally employed by websites to control their appearance. Furthermore, people with disabilities browse the Internet using screen readers or other assistive technologies which may not display your site as intended. Some systems may have limited or no support for JavaScript; some systems may not have the Flash plug-in installed; and some users may even browse the Internet with images disabled. When designing your custom website, you may wish to create a design that will display as close to universally as possible, degrading gracefully for alternate technologies; or you may wish to maximize each user's experience through the creation of multiple versions of your site design, with different versions targeted to different web browsers. This can be done with multiple targeted stylesheets, or through browser detection in combination with server-side scripting.
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A Template-Based Website
Sometimes all you need is something simple; and when that's the case, there's no need to reinvent the wheel, as they say. That's why Basementia Design™ offers high-quality website templates at a very low cost. You can license just the template itself and perform your own custom modifications; or you can select additional options at checkout and take advantage of our great commodity pricing on customization services and website hosting.
Click here to view website template designs available from Basementia Design™.
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Website Contact Forms
Almost everyone who sets out to create a new website wants prospective clients to be able to contact them through it. The fantastic thing about the medium of the Internet is that someone browsing along and stumbling upon your site can send you a message instantaneously, without logging in to their e-mail or remembering how to type your address correctly.
Some people post their actual e-mail address on their website as a 'mailto' link, but we strongly discourage this practice because spammers employ web crawlers that hunt down mailto links and report the address back to the spammer's server. In other words, posting a mailto link essentially guarantees that you will start receiving spam e-mail. Using a web contact form instead is not a complete prevention (spambots can still find your e-mail in your PayPal button code, and some may even auto-submit your contact form) but it allows for more flexibility in filtering the types of messages that can be sent. For example, a website may employ a test to make sure that the user has supplied a valid e-mail address. Additionally, many websites employ http://www.captcha.net/ CAPTCHA to help prevent comment form spam and auto-submission by spambots.
When you get a custom website designed by Basementia™, a basic contact form is always part of the bargain. If you want a more extensive form, or a more secure form submission system, just let us know and we'll write it into your contract.
Basic contact forms are available for website templates; just check the appropriate box on the Options page and the system will add the price to your total when you check out.
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A Content Management System (CMS) for your website
There are a number of Content Management Systems freely available for use on your website. Basementia's website hosting server interface offers easy installation of several of these, including WordPress, Joomla and Drupal. You may choose the system that best suits your needs. If you are not sure, we recommend WordPress.
WordPress is a lightweight Content Management System, originally designed for blogs but functionally useful for many other types of basic websites. More intuitive to use than some of the more robust systems, WordPress allows you to create and edit pages for your website directly through your web browser. The interface is as easy to use as your e-mail program or word processing software, and allows you to easily upload images to your web page.
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A do-it-yourself website on the cheap
If you are trying to save money, you can install the free WordPress blogging software yourself. Basementia's server environment provides a simple way to do this with only a few clicks of the mouse. Regardless of your web server, as long as it supports PHP with MySQL, you can always download the WordPress software from www.wordpress.org and follow the detailed instructions to install it yourself.
Once you have installed WordPress, you can download low-cost WordPress "themes" from a number of websites all over the Internet. Some websites even offer them for free! Once you have downloaded the theme of your choice, just unzip (decompress) the files and upload them to the "themes" folder of your WordPress installation. Then select your new theme from the WordPress dashboard and start creating content for your new website. It really is that easy! There are even user support forums that offer advice if you get stuck.
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A custom WordPress theme
Basementia can create a custom WordPress theme or "skin" tailored to your specifications. You get all the features of a custom website overlaid onto the convenience of the WordPress blogging software. This means that you (or your staff) can easily edit your web pages without having to learn how to write website code.
If you already have an existing website that you are happy with, but would like to be able to modify the pages yourself, we can create a WordPress theme from your present site design. Your site's visitors will hardly notice the difference, and you get the added control and satisfaction of performing your own website updates at your convenience.
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E-commerce Sites
If you have a product or service you would like to sell through your website, the first thing you will need is an account with a payment processor. Most small businesses and startups sign up for an account with PayPal; and many online shoppers already have an account with PayPal as well. Google now offers a similar service called Google Checkout. These services are convenient, and if you are a do-it-yourselfer, they provide you with easy-to-use tools for generating the code to create shopping cart systems and "buy now" buttons.
If you have an established business with an existing card payment processing service through your financial institution, you may want to consider hiring Basementia to create a custom e-commerce system, especially if you anticipate a high sales volume through your website, because PayPal's transaction fees may be more than double the fees charged by your existing payment processor. This could involve storing client card payment details in a database and e-mailing a payment notification to your staff, who would then log in to a secure site to retrieve the payment information and then run the card on your in-house VeriFone machine. If you choose such a system, it is essential that you also establish a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) on your web server to prevent sensitive data from being compromised by snoops and hackers.
Once you have selected your payment processing service, Basementia can create your custom website shopping cart and checkout system. We cap such a system by coding buttons that send the required information to your payment processor's API (application program interface). You can collect as much information from the customer as you like on your own website and save that information to a database, or you can let the customer enter all their shipping and billing details on PayPal's website and PayPal will send it to you in an e-mail.
Additionally, we have experience coding specialty checkouts systems utilizing the PayPal IPN (instant payment notification) API, which will allow your website to instantly allow online sales of downloadable digital merchandise.
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An Online Catalog That You Can Update Yourself
The free, open-source osCommerce software is essentially a Content Management System for e-commerce business websites. It allows you to create and delete product listings, to upload images of those products, and to write product descriptions. Basementia can create a custom "skin" or theme for your osCommerce installation, tailoring your website's appearance to your needs.
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Custom Inventory Database Systems
Basementia has proven experience creating a custom Finished Goods Inventory Database for manufacturers whose clients have an ongoing purchasing agreement. Such a system allows the manufacturer to record the quantity, description and value of items that are "on the shelf" and ready to ship; and it allows their clients to log in to a system that allows them to view the available inventory and to order call-outs with a simple click of the mouse.
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Have something specific in mind? Click here to contact Basementia Design™ for a custom quote!
We look forward to working with you.
