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How To Begin And Get
The Best Out Of My Service First let me say if you want inexpensive web service
(+/-$10/hr) with fast turn around time (usually within 24 hours) you have come to the right place. If you want a website and ongoing management that delivers your content to your market in a clear and
straightforward manner and you want your clients to tell you that they appreciate being able to get the information from your site easily, then this is how to proceed in getting me to work for you.
- The Following Is Important (read it before you ask me to begin work for you)
All of us have grown up learning how to design from the time we put crayon to paper.
But this experience has conditioned us to think that page layout on the web is a 2 dimensional 8.5"x11" environment. But web design is subtly different. The "page" is scrollable and the most important element is invisible...the navigation
system. Web design is very much about the relationship of elements and requires an attention to how these elements get stitched together by a very powerful attribute... the hyperlink. The hyperlink creates instant relationships.
Your idea of a particular layout will not always be exactly implemented. The process of website construction using a component based editor as well as certain aspects of my design approach that allow me to manage your website (make edits
and additions) very efficiently and therefore keep your cost down, does create some limitations to the final rendering.
Please do not expect me to simply copy an existing website or publish bad text or image formatting. Please
read my "How to Build a Website" article, and if you are having trouble getting started on what to publish, read "Are You Blocked?".
Take a good look at my
client websites; these are the results of what I do. If you want something different than what I produce, make sure that you have explained to me in detail what it is you want.
I may not want
to do what you want. In that case, I may want to subcontract, or not be engaged.
- I prefer communicating via email... it means I don't have to write anything down; I have your email to refer to and I can get to your request in a timely fashion. I don't mind you calling me on the phone,
in fact you should if you want to get another sense of me or if you have a query that is easier to express on the phone... but please follow up with an email if you have a request of me... my inbox is a very busy place and I cannot manage
your request as efficiently from a scribbled piece of paper somewhere on my desk.
- Send me your domain name choice (If you have done this... go to step # 4) <www.your-name-choice.com> and the following information:
YOUR NAME:
YOUR ORGANIZATION
NAME:
YOUR ADDRESS:
YOUR PHONE:
YOUR EMAIL:
...and I will register it. Read about my registration service here.
- Send me your text in either the body of an email, or in an MS Word Document or Notepad attachment. Don't spend a lot of time formatting your text or doing a lot of layout design unless you are trying to
convey a few ideas that you have. I have to take all your text and strip it of all its formatting and enter it into my web editor (MS FrontPage) and basically start from scratch. So if you do send me formatting and layout ideas, I will
take note of them but I will not simply copy your ideas because a website layout is not the same as a 2 dimensional print layout. Please do not send me text by postmail to be published, I am not a typist. If you are not willing to type
your text into an email get someone to do it for you.
- Send me your images in JPG, GIF, PNG or BMP format as separate attachments to an email. When you are saving images to a file (Save As) so that you can send me that file as an attachment, do not save the
images greater than 640 pixels wide or greater than 100 DPI (dots per inch). Most monitors are set to 800 pixels wide and some of that margin width is used for navigation or other elements. Images for the web do not need to be at high DPI
because monitors are limited to the number of pixels that can be rendered in a square inch unlike print media which can employ a high DPI. To get your digital photos to look good on your website read and do this.
NOTE: If you are an Apple/Mac user, to get your mail program
to attach the image files to your out going email to me, change your
outgoing mail setting to "Text" rather than "HTML" this will force
your mail program to "attach" the files rather than "embed" them in
the body of the email.
- So now I have your text and images... I will first organize them into a few pages; I need only two pages to build the navigation system (so I don't need much to get going), and I will publish them so you
can look at what I have done and we can then edit and make additions from there. You don't need to have all your ideas worked out in advance so don't get hung up, send me what you have.
- If you have specific ideas about the colours you want to have me use for various elements of your site please refer to my colour charts. If you don't have any particular
ideas, I will use the images that you send as a source for a colour palette.
- I like to place a "letterhead" logo in the "shared border" (CSS "Cascading Style Sheet") so that it appears on the top of each page automatically. If you don't already have some artwork (business card
art, letterhead, some image that you like that's under a magnet on your fridge door) I can easily put an image and some text together to create a logo. See my client websites for ideas, and Microsoft
publishes free clip art here: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/clipart/default.aspx
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