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Thinking About a Website – Typical Websites
Posted on | August 29, 2008 | Comments Off
Websites that are designed and built can be categorised into four main types.
The Brochure Website
The More Detailed Information Website
The Large Content/Information Website
The Blogging Website.
The descriptions for each website type below provides information on what is involved in the design of the website to give a better indication of how costs will be decided. To get information on costs for a website that you would like to get designed, contact me at: info(at)mauramcdonnell.com or make an enquiry by filling out the form on the Contact Page. You will receive a reply and more information as soon as possible.
Brochure Website
A brochure website typically consists of:
- Customised Design
- A Small Amount - of text and images typically organised into approximately 5 pages
- Also called a Brochure Website – this kind of website is a way of getting an online presence that overviews your service, business or what the site is about. It is a good first step in getting a website.
- Domain Name and Domain Hosting – can be arranged with a hosting company, where the combined annual fee for a .com name and a hosting plan starts at approximately 50 euros per year
- Launch the Website – Make all the pages of the site live at the domain url (website name)
- Updating the Website – can be done a number of ways: by the client if they have access to their own updating software or ftp client and are familiar with html files; updating software can be purchased by the client to update the site and training in using the software can be organised; a content management system can be installed and customised for your design by the web designer and training given in how to use it; or the web designer can maintain the site for you, invoicing you for the maintenance work. The updating aspect of your website will therefor vary in costs according to which updating solution you choose.
- Extras - when you start creating your website, it is possible that you would like to add more content or extra features, this is perfectly fine to do, but will be need to be costed with the web designer and/or the time it takes to add in the extra content and features will be invoiced at an hourly rate.
If you want to save costs and already have purchased a design template, then you can employ me to code that template and create a website for you from it. The cost you save will be the design part of the site. If you are going to go looking for templates, then do contact me for some links to recommended templates that you could purchase and then employ the web designer to adapt and install it for you and build the content and pages of your site. Email: info(at)mauramcdonnell.com
More Detailed Information Website
As well as the above, the more detailed website wants to provide a more comprehensive description of the main features of the business, organisation or individual. It is not enough to just provide an overview as in the brochure website. If there are products in the business, these will need to be organised into pages, with photographs if relevant and detailed description content. If the individual wants to provide information and photographs from regular events, these events and photographs will need to be organised and inserted into relevant pages. The above descriptions are just two examples of a website that provides more detailed information. The design of this website will need to attend to all the types of content that will be in the website and how best to organise this content.
The More Detailed Information Website typcially consists of:
- Customised Design
- Information Organisation
- Main Menu and Sub Menu Design
- Photograph Gallery Script
- Content Insertion – this will vary. Content will be organised into relevant pages. If there is a lot of content then this will raise costs for this stage of the development of the website.
- Updating Solutions – if the site is a static site of html pages, then you will need to have the software to update your site, if you need software this can be arranged and training in how to use it to update your website can be provided, as in the brochure site. The cost of updating will vary according to what you will need in relation to adding new content to the site. However, you may prefer to be able to update the website from any browser, for this you will need a Content Management System (CMS) installed, see the next bullet point.
- CMS – sometimes it is useful to be able to update the content online, this can be arranged. The CMS is installed and customised for your design, and then the pages of the site are built within the CMS, training can be provided to update the content of your site from the CMS.
- Blog - Blogging is becoming a very familiar and useful tool for individuals, businesses and organisations. It provides for your site visitor an insight into your views/news / personality and can act as a building up a profile for yourself or organisation, so that your site visitors can get to know more in an informal way. A useful way to use a blog is to have it hosted on your own domain. This can be arranged. You can have the blog take the design of your site or let it have its own design (this will be a design cost). The blog will have a different sub menu to the rest of your site reflecting the post nature of blogging as opposed to the pages of a typical website.
Large Content/ Information Website
As well as the above, the site that needs to present a lot of content and information will need a lot more planning at the initial stages of the creation of the webiste, in order to ensure that all kinds of content that will be on the site are accounted for and will then be included and considered in the design and the layout of the pages. For the large content website, there may need to be several customisations of the main design in order to display several different types of content and sub menus.
The Large Content/ Information Website typcially consists of:
- Project Scoping and Content Organisation
- Customised Design (s) – the main design and several sub content area designs
- Information Organisation
- Main Menu and All Other Menu Designs
- Photograph Gallery Script
- News Section
- Building the menus pages of the site
- Content Insertion – this will vary. Content will be organised into relevant pages. If there is a lot of content then this will raise costs for this stage of the development of the website.
- Updating Solutions – you may have already got software to update the site, this can still be used to update the site, if the site is a static site, and you dont have software, the software to update the site can be arranged and training provided.
- CMS – sometimes it is useful to be able to update the content online, this can be arranged. The CMS is installed and customised for your design, and then the pages of the site are built within the CMS, training can be provided to update the content of your site from the CMS. Several users can be set up to update the site.
- Blog (if needed)
Blogging Website
Recently, it is popular to have a blog as a website. There are many free blogging services. However, blogs can be installed and managed from your own website. Blogs can be designed and customised to any design. They are a new type of website, where the content is inserted into the site via posts. These posts are written online, via an admin interface (there are other methods of posting to your own hosted blog also)
Blogs are relatively easy to set up and can be installed on a web server (if you have a website already hosted and which can support the technology to run the blog – if you need to get a domain and host this will add to the time to install the blog). However, this will give you a bog standard blog where the only thing you will be able to change in terms of design, typically is the header text. Getting a web designer to set up and design a blog for you then consists of:
- Customised Design
- Arranging Domain Name and Hosting (annual fee with hosting provider -arranged on your behalf)
- Installing the blogging software on your domain host
- Customising the templates design in the blogging software to look like your customised design
- Adding in any features and functions you might like to include – photo galleries, statistics, etc..
- Inserting Content
- Launching the blog at your url
- Updating – Training can be provided in how to post to the blog will need some technical updating from time to time – such as an updated version of the software, backing up the database, backing up the site, adding in any new features.
However, if you wish to save costs with your blogging website, there are some real nice blog templates – both free and purchasable templates. You could get the web designer to install these for you. However, if you need any customisation of the tempate, then this will take time and will need to be costed accordingly. However, you would save on design costs, if you were able to source a template that suited you well. The template can be installed for you. Contact me at: info(at)mauramcdonnell.com or make an enquiry by filling out the form on the Contact Page for recommended urls for free and purchasable blogging templates.
Maura McDonnell can build any of the above type of websites for you. Web Development times vary – according to the amount of content and the types of features you will need in your site, timespans typically are from 3 weeks to several months. Make an enquiry today and you should have a website up and running as fast as possible.