This is our basic, Starter Package. It's not your typical starter package for a website. It lets you build a high-powered site that will expand services as you need them.
Who can use the Starter Website Package?
- Small Business Owners. You want people to find you on the Internet, but you want to do most of your sales at your business.
- Artist or Musician. You want your fans to see galleries of your work or you want fans to be able to listen to clips of music. Maybe you want to sell some art or music in a simple, online store.
We added up all the expected costs and our commitment of time. It's a steal at an estimated starting price of $750.
Naming Your Site
We'll help you set up your website address. That includes finding a good domain name for your website. Sometimes we recommend buying similar names to prevent problems with other people who also like the name you choose. We'll help you navigate the sometimes confusing world of domain names.
- Purchase. Find and purchase a domain name for one year. Private or locked domain names, as well as additional domain names, require extra charges.
- Link to Website. Activate and point the domain name to a web hosting account on our servers.
Email Addresses
If you want to have credibility, it's better to have your email use the same domain name as your website. We'll also help you set up your email tools like Gmail so you can read your email how you like.
- Accounts. Create up to 5 email accounts that use your domain name. Additional email accounts are $5 each.
- Spam Control. Activate Spam Assassin on your email host.
- Reader Set-up. Set up your email in your web browser or email client depending on how many computers you use for your email.
Hosting
Your website has to be placed on servers at a data center and managed by a hosting company. There are hundreds of hosting companies and a few large data centers. Most are similar. We prefer those that use standard setup tools and have good site security and support.
- Account Setup. Create a website account on our server space.
- Content Management System. Install Joomla, arguably the best content management system available for full-featured websites.
- Backup Tools. Install website backup software.
- User-Friendly Editor. Configure our website editor for your use. (If you can use a word processor, you can use our editor.)
- Tools for Photo Upload. Install media managers for uploading photographs and other images.
Estimating the Cost
- Templates. Install up to 3 website templates to allow you to choose your site's look and feel. Our basic template setup costs $50. If we need to purchase a commercial template, our setup fee is $50 plus the cost of the template.
- Article Organization. Define up to 5 content categories for articles (stories) linking to menus. Additional categories are $10 each.
- Email Contact Organization. Configure up to 3 email contact categories. Additional categories are $5 each.
- Main Menu Structure. Configure the Main Menu with up to 10 options. This will enable approximately 10 primary web pages with many more drill-down pages automatically created by the system. Each additional menu option is $10.
- Management Menu. Configuration of a private User Menu for website content development, photo uploading, etc. Additional, specialized menus are available for $10 and $10 per menu option.
- Visitor Monitoring. Installation of Google Analytics for monitoring of visitors and website errors.
- Search Engine Tools. Creation of a sitemap for Google and other search engines.
- Specialized Tools & Content Rendering. Placement of two specialized modules, e.g. breadcrumbs (navigation aid), newsflash, event calendar, site search, poll, or other tools. We install additional tools for $25 plus any commercial costs.
Most Important: Content
- Dummy Content. Draft web pages for menu options with dummy text content and photographs. Dummy content allows you to visualize how your web pages will look.
- Logo. Text logo and slogan for all pages. Graphical logos require additional charges depending on the fees of our professional graphics artist.
- Page Footer. Custom footer for all pages with copyright notices and custom messages.
Typical Cost
- Basic Setup: $750
- Template: $50
- Article Organization: No additional charge
- Email: No additional charge
- Main menu: No additional charge
- Custom Logo: $200
- Specialized Tools: $50
Total: $1050