Website development process

On this page we summarise

new website design
new website development
website testing and installation
extras

New website design

domain name search

If you do not already have one then we will help you find a suitable and affordable domain name for you.

For example, www.Bobbing Wide.com is suitable for a company called Bobbing Wide, but

www.Bobbing Widewebdesign.com or www.Bobbing Widewebdevelopment.com might be better names as these indicate the purpose of the business.

Another thing to consider is the domain name suffix: .com, .net, .org or country specific such as .co.uk.

You should name your site to reflect the service you are providing and, if applicable your locality.

Self registration

If you want to check if your preferred domain name is available, and to register it yourself, then please click on this link below.

When you've chosen your domain name it needs to be registered.
Medium to large businesses prefer to register the domain names themselves.
Smaller businesses often allow their website developer to register it on their behalf.

If you don't want to register the domain name yourself then we can do it for you.
We can re-assign the domain name to you once your site has been set up. (there may be a charge for this).

Also note: domain name renewals often cost a lot more per year than the initial registration. So, it's a good idea to register your domain name for as many years as you think you'll need it.

design your website

New website development

develop the XHTML

develop the CSS

develop custom code

develop the XHTML

XHTML stands for stands for eXtensible HyperText Markup Language. It is a W3C Recommendation. We will endeavour to develop your site to XHTML standards.
W3C XHTML validation

When I say endeavour it means that sometimes the XHTML will not conform to standards. For example, when first developed this page did not conform to standards since the technique I used to make this text appear when you hover over the link meant that I used non-conforming HTML.
Now that I have re-implemented he solution using a Drupal slideshow, I no longer have the problem. And it's actually a much better solution.

develop the CSS

CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets.

Where XHTML is used to specify the content of your web site's pages, CSS is used to define the layout.

CSS enables us to develop web sites that can be used on a variety of systems.

We will endeavour to develop code that conforms to the W3C standards for CSS.
W3C standard for CSS

develop custom code

There may be times when you have a lot of repetitive information
that you want to display in the same layout on different pages.

Rather than just writing the same XHTML tags over and over again
the static pages can be created by server side programming using a
scripting language such as PHP.

For example, the contents of these web pages are stitched together using PHP.
You can't see it since the PHP code generates the XHTML.

Also, on the

Anchor Golf Society website, custom code is used
to ease the maintenance of the player lists and the tee times draws.

If the code can be easily developed, or found
in the vast Open Source libraries, then we may be able run a web site
which appears to be dynamic but without the need for a Content Management System.
This means you may not have a dependency on a database for storing the
information so your server requirements will be reduced.

website testing and installation

testing

web server selection

installation

create site maps

testing

Having developed the XHTML and CSS we will test the web site using a variety of web browsers
(e.g. Internet Explorer (IE) 8, Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera, Safari )

If you specifically require testing for other browsers
such as old versions of IE (6 and 7) then
please let us know.

We may also be able to test your website using Linux based browsers.

There could be some minor formatting issues with different browsers. Some of these may be acceptable.
Others may need to be fixed using CSS hacks or possibly even different code.

If you have a specific requirement we will also test the layout when printed.

web server selection

We will choose a web hosting site to fit your budget,
taking into account

size of your web site - disk space requirements
number of users and pages served - bandwidth
amount of change planned

In many cases we will be able to offer you hosting on one of our reseller hosting systems.

installation

When the code has been tested on a test site we will then install
all of the source code onto your web server.

Files that will be uploaded to your web server may include

Source pages (.html and .php)
Style sheets (.css)
Custom code (.php and .inc)
Logos and images, including favico.ico
Photos and thumbnails
Sound files
Video files
Sitemap
robots.txt
Other files as needed

If you wish to maintain it yourself we will also make the source available to you.

create site maps

The site map is a file that we place on the web server to provide a documented map of the web pages.

This is used to allow search engines to display details about your web server.

This file is in addition to another file, called robots.txt, which tells search engine bots what they should and should not attempt to index.

You can read more about site maps at the Google Business Solutions help page.

extras

register with Google Places - local business directory entry

A Google Places Local Business directory entry helps customers find you on Google Maps.

Any business can have a free listing.

If you go to Google Maps and search for Bobbing Wide then you should find our entry quite quickly.

Bobbing Wide on Google Maps

Email: herb@bobbingwide.com work02392 410090 cell07876 236864

Bobbing Wideweb design - web development