Why do you use a content management system (CMS) for my websites?
The reason why we use a CMS package for your website is because we believe that it allows you as our client to have the most flexible process possible when it comes to maintaining your website. Furthermore, this approach will save you thousands of dollars in software and development costs. As mentioned previously, your cost can be significant if your website was designed from scratch.
Why do you say that the cost of maintence is so high?
The fact of the matter is when you create a website, it does not just take care of it self. You will need to do vaious things to keep it current. Among them includes search engine optimization (SEO), content updates, contact information, new links, new graphics, etc. These updates does not happen automatically. It requires someone to make those changes. If you have a traditional website written primarily in HTML, you can spend hours and hundreds of dollars updating the code for any changes or new content. Furthermore, in most cases, these tasks are relegated to the website designer who may be working on other tasks that makes your request to say change your phone number to be low priority. Now think about that one.
How much does a website cost?
Remember the old saying, "you get what you pay for." With a website, it is no difference. A website can cost thousands of dollars. Certainly a system like the one we implement for you can cost tens of thousands of dollars of development time. However, we have packages to meet almost every budget and expertise and we only charge a fraction of that cost. What affects the cost will depend on your requirements. Some examples include e-commerce, custom graphics and/or modules, newletter, blogging, flash, etc. When considering the cost of a website, don't just look at the initial amount. Do consider the maintenance and hosting as well. In addition, evaluate it based on the amount of money you will generate when you have the right kind of website working for your business. Remember, it is not how much you spend that makes the difference, it is how much you will make for the money you do spend. Like we said, having a website should be like having a well trained salesperson on your staff working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. How much would you spend on that kind of resource? Click here to see our current promotions.
Who owns my website?
The ownership question can be a tricky one to answer. Technically the website has several parts which you may own some while other people own others (with you having a limited license to use it). For instance, you would typically be the owner of your domain. The domain is your URL or website address. The code used to create your website is licensed to you through the GNU Public License (GPL) and therefore is owned by the respective authors. Any code that we create as custom will remain owned by us and licensed to you for use on your website. Likewise, the graphics remain the ownership of the authors as provided by your agreement with them.
What if I am not satisfied with your service and would like terminate my relationship?
First off, we will attempt to do every reasonable to resolve issues surrounding your dissatifaction. But if you feel that you must terminate your relationship with us, we will provide you with the components of your site that is in keeping with our agreement. Since the majority of the code for your site is governed by the GPL, it will be necessary for you to abide by its requirements. In addition, we will give to your your content, graphics and other such elements that does not violate our licensing agreements with any third-party vendors. Any custom code we developed to meet your needs remains in our ownership while we may issue to you a license (applicable fees may apply) to use it at your new hosting provider. It will be up to you and your new hosting provider to reconstruct and configure the system to your needs.
Why did you select Drupal as the CMS package for your websites?
We spent several months evaluating serveral packages and found that Drupal met most of our needs. First off, it was free (offered through the GPL). This means incredible cost savings for us which we can pass on to our clients. With Drupal you have the use of thousands of dollars worth of fully functional code for FREE. This makes creating a fully rich functioned website for our client a very cost-effective value proposition. Furthermore, it is a system that has a tremendous amount of developers from around the world who are making updates and fixes to it. It also uses industry standards such as PHP and MySQL, making the system highly portable. Finally, we found the system easy to manipulate to satisfy our core business needs. However, with all this said, we reserve the rights to change our offering to use other similar type of packages at anytime as we feel the need.
Should I get professional help?
The answer to this question will depend on your needs. As website professionals, we believe that everyone should get some professional help if they are serious about marketing their business using their website. However, there are a lot of self-help books and online resources for the do-it-yourselfers that would be a great start if you are on a tight budget. Keep in mind that we have used an approach to website design that attempts to make the process a simple as possible. In addition, we doing it at the fraction of the cost you will find elsewhere. When you seek professional help, we advise you to seek qualify individuals for each aspect of your website. For instance, a graphics person may not be the best at developing the technical components of a website and vise versa. For your professional team, we recommend at least 3 key skillsets: technical, visual and copy. Because, without them you may find your site to be crippled.
