Development Technologies
If you use your web site to either help your business or do your business in the first place, it's important that your web site have the following characteristics:
- Available
This means your web site is not down all the time. It also means that upgrades and improvements can be made without any down time or interruption of service. - Secure
This means your web site is protected against both malicious attacks and simple mistakes (either by you or your visitors). - Cost Effective
This means that the investment you make in your web site is somehow returned. A return on investment is obviously determined many different ways. In most cases, however, your return can be made exponentially larger when lowering your site's initial costs. This usually means implementing software that does not require monumental licensing fees. - Visitor Friendly
A lot of high-profile organizations these days forget the reason they created their web sites in the first place: to provide a service to new and existing customers. When you keep service in mind, your web site will remain a valuable service both to your visitors and yourself. - Maintenance Friendly
If you think updating your site is a chore, or something difficult to do, you won't update it very often. This lowers your site's value and may turn paying customers away. A good site is made in such a way that the site's maintainers are not bogged down by strange programs or unfamiliar work flows. Most sites can be managed a dozen different ways. Finding the right maintenance procedures can make a huge difference in your site's value.
To accomplish these goals, there are many technologies in the industry that can help provide the services necessary to publish and operate your site. Unfortunately, there are many technologies that offer the same or similar services with varying output. Keeping our set of goals in mind, however, we find that there is a fairly ideal set of tools that can be used to meet our lofty standards.
Technical Standards
This area focuses on how the web site operates, in a technical sense. By implementing technologies that have proven reliability and security, we leave out the guess work and focus on more important matters. All of the web sites I develop are implemented using industry-leading software:
- The Apache web server is, by far, the most popular, reliable, stable, fast, and secure web server in the world. Since we're also concerned with our bottom line, it's nice to know that this software is released without any licensing fees. Simply put, the best web server in the world is free.
- MySQL is a leader in database management platforms. The server software itself is regarded as possibly the fastest implementation of a relational database management system available with or without a license. Managed by a security-conscious administrator, the server also provides your data a level of protection only found in platforms costing above and beyond $1000/license.
- To run the whole show, your site will operate on a web host that implements FreeBSD as their operating system of choice. In a nutshell, FreeBSD is an operating system that is designed to meet the needs of anyone who cares about security, reliability, speed, and cost. Not only is FreeBSD without licensing fees, it is also built to operate on cheaper, personal-computer hardware. I bet you didn't realize that old Pentium 166MHz computer you have in your basement could function as a world-class server!
If you've read the preceding list and noticed that there is no mention of things like Microsoft, IIS, or even FrontPage, you're probably coming from a world that is used to computer viruses, trojans, spyware, system crashes, poor performance under stress, etc. You're also probably used to paying hefty licensing fees for your software. These things barely exist when you use this level of software.
Right now, you're probably wondering, "What's the catch?" There is no real catch. The difference in these solutions is where your experience lies. My solutions come from a background of seeing multiple applications that perform the same function. I've used platforms like Windows/IIS. One of my jobs used to be maintaining an IIS server on Windows 2000. For all the money my company spent on hardware, software, and upkeep the IIS system couldn't begin to compete with a server running far inferior hardware that was running Apache on FreeBSD. Windows and its applications started life as a system for helping people use their computers without a lot of technical knowledge. The free solutions all involve a little more technical knowledge, but they easily pay for themselves with minimal maintenance compared to expensive solutions.
Presentation Standards
To enforce our goal set, we will also need to focus on how your site is presented. This can be as mundane as logos and color schemes, but it can also focus on availability of services to people with physical disabilities and people using a wide range of web browser/client devices. If you want your site to be accessible no matter what kind of software or device is used to view it, many considerations have to be weighed. The easiest choices come in how the site is laid out and displayed graphically.
All web sites I develop are built around standards that many development companies ignore. In simple terms, there are many ways to display a web page in a browser. But, there are only a few, more technical, ways to make that same site accessible to someone on their cell phone, a text terminal, or using an audible screen reader. The reason a lot of developers ignore this aspect of web publishing is because it's more difficult. However, if you're relying on your site for business purposes, you can't afford to pass up business because your site couldn't be easily navigated on someone's 3-inch PDA screen.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it's important to weigh the possibilities you have for your site. There are many areas that people overlook that can make or break an otherwise excellent service. It's also important to realize that mission-critical software doesn't have to cost thousands of dollars. That's why my services can be so valuable before you even know what you want your site to look like. If you lower your up-front costs, it takes much less income through that investment before you have a 100% return. Why drop $5,000 on a web site when you'll only make $50 a month on revenue from the site? If you spend $500 on a web site that has the same features, your return comes back in less than a year! Obviously, I chose $50/month to create a hyperbolic situation. Many organizations make thousands of dollars a month through advertising on their web site. If you have a product to sell, the limits are only the marketability of that product--not your web site.