How do I determine what size my website should be?

If you're not sure what you need, the best thing to do is contact us for a free consultation. Click here to send us an email or give us a call to discuss your project. In general, though (and this is definitely a flexible guideline), you can count on needing at least one page per department or subject. Barring that, budget is the only other concern (larger sites, of course, cost more).

What are content revisions?

Once your website is designed, we'll submit it to you for the Final Review process. This is to verify that the site has shaped up as expected, and to confirm that all information is correct and accounted for. Any "tweaking" that needs to be done after this Final Review would fall under the heading "content revisions." Alternatively, content revisions can refer to website maintenance and upkeep: Any site that contains dated information is subject to revision as the old information becomes...just that: old. When time-sensitive news or events posted on your website stop being current, it's best to update the information so that your customers can not only avail themselves of your latest and best offerings, they can also see that you have a well-tended, organized website. Websandwich's two types of Content Revision services are an inexpensive, hassle-free way of accomplishing that.

How do the two types of content revisions differ?

Any revisions which require only retyping or text-editing fall under the less-expensive, text-only revision category, since those changes are simpler and require less time to make. Accordingly, more extensive revisions, such as adjusting HTML (e.g. light website remodeling) and graphic and digital imaging fall under the design revision category. Each design and des/hos package comes with a certain amount of content revision to allow for customer refinement and adjustment before the end of the design process, for use before your site is uploaded.

What are stock photos?

Stock photos are photographs which require a licensing fee and/or royalties in order to use because copyright of the original image is reserved by its owner. In our case, (okay, stay close, it gets a little sticky here) Websandwich pays a fee to acquire the licensing rights to sell our clients the right to use stock photos from our photo library in their websites. If using royalty-free stock photos (which we do), then a one-time licensing fee applies, usually different for different markets (regional would be cheaper than national, for example). Since we're in the web design business (technically an international market, as websites are accessible globally once they're on the Internet), we simply assign international rights, in perpetuity, for any image a client uses (which means that you're free to use that image in your digital AND printed corporate material as often as you like, for as long as you like).

What's a wordmark?

A wordmark is a company's signature symbol, made up only of the words in the business name. The style, configuration, and placement of the letters alone make up a unique arrangement by which that company becomes known.

What's a logo/logo group?

A logo, like a wordmark, is the symbol which represents a company. The difference is that a logo is pictorial, rather than text-based. A logo group includes the company logo, name, and slogan or positioning statement.

What's a positioning statement?

Unlike a slogan, which is simply a catchy phrase (Dorito's "Eat all you want, we'll make more," for example), a positioning statement is a memorable phrase that specifically describes a way in which you're different from (and of course better than) your competitors (Papa John's "Better ingredients. Better pizza.").

There are effectively two computers involved in building, maintaining, and viewing a website on the Internet: the local one (essentially your home computer from which the files are uploaded and from where it can be viewed), and the remote one, the server, which is a special computer that keeps a copy of your website's files (after they've been uploaded), making your site available for visitors to look at while they're connected to the Internet.

What is hosting?

The Internet is actually a very large group of servers, scattered all over the world, all "talking" to each other. Hosting is a service provided whereby your website has a place to "live" on one of these servers, making your website accessible via the Internet.

Think of the web host as a landlord, your website as a tenant, the hosting fee as rent, and the server as the rental property being leased.

What is webspace?

That's our term for the amount of room (memory) needed to hold your website's files on our servers. The server is keeping an actual copy of your website's files, and that takes up space, or memory, on its hard drive. Conventionally measured in megabytes (M); a megabyte is a thousand kilobytes (K), or a million bytes (b). One byte is enough memory to represent about one letter of the alphabet.

What is bandwidth?

When a person views a page on your website, a certain amount of information is transferred between the server and the visitor's computer. The term for measuring the flow of information is called bandwidth, and it's a measure of the amount of traffic your website gets (the number of pageviews or visitors), and/or the size of the files being viewed (audio and video files are larger than text files, for example). The conventional unit of measurement is called a "gigabyte (G)," which is a thousand M, or a million K, or a billion bytes (hence our slogan). On an average-sized website, it would take about 100,000 pageviews of your website in one month to use up 1 G of bandwidth for that month.

What's a MySQL database?

MySQL is one of the many computer languages used to operate in cyber-space, so to speak, to make the webmaster's life easier. This one specializes in allowing two computers (the local and remote ones) to talk to each other in such a way as to allow one to access and upload information automatically to the other, such as when someone posts a message on a discussion board, or signs a guestbook. The MySQL database automatically uploads the new information and inserts it in the proper place, allowing others to view the new information right away without the webmaster having to input or upload the info manually.

Similar to what it means in the common vernacular and in fluid dynamics, namely to produce, reproduce, or spread. In the context of the Internet, propagate refers to the action of information being disseminated through the global network of servers that make up the World Wide Web. It takes a bit of time, usually a couple of days, but sometimes only a few hours, for new website addresses to be made known around the world, becoming globally accessible.

Embedded keywords are one kind of information that search engines examine to assess a website's content and determine whether it's right for inclusion in their database. All our design work includes 20-30 embedded keywords in the homepage.

FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol, and it's one of the methods of getting your website's files onto a server ("uploaded"), thus making your site accessible via the Internet. The server actually holds a lot of information besides website files, not all of which is meant for public viewing; FTP access refers to the ability of a person to access the server from their own computer for the sole purpose of uploading their own website files.

Why do you require a deposit on account?

This type of work is typically done using the "half-up-front, half-on-completion" payment method. While the amount of the deposit for any package is almost always a little less than half the estimated total, it's still a way of "getting the ball rolling," so to speak, and provides a pool from which to draw funds for initial costs incurred by the process of generating and maintaining a website.

If alternative payment terms have been agreed upon, typically the finished project won't be delivered until half the contract price has been paid.

Where do I send my hosting payment?

If you're not paying online via PayPal, you can send checks, money orders, or cashier's checks made out to Samara Crutchfield to:

Websandwich.net
Division of SBS Multimedia
PO Box 5173
Gainesville, FL 32627-5173

We also have subscriptions available, whereby you can pay for your hosting account by credit card once, and then all subsequent hosting payments are automatically and securely deducted from your credit card account. You can request a subscription payment link at any time with no additional fees or interruption of service.

Why does this cost more than I thought?

Web design is an extremely time-intensive process: It can take tens of hours just to create a single page, depending on several factors. In addition to the significant investment of time, a web designer must have special software at the very least, and additional equipment at best to really offer first-rate design services. Websandwich actually offers ridiculously competitive rates: One way we keep our rates as low as they are is by specifying that we do entry-level web design.

Generally, it means web design using basic code (HTML for example, is the most commonly known) and graphics or other low-tech accoutrements. Many of the more complex sites use time-intensive features including (but not limited to) databases, advanced web-developer tools like Flash or Shockwave, streaming audio, and online community-building features. These advanced sites require even more time and specialized software to design, and can drive website building into many months of development and tens of thousands of dollars in cost (we're not kidding).

Another thing to consider is that viewing those more extensive sites requires a lot more time because of longer page-loads, or the need for a high-speed Internet connection, not to mention the probability of having to download special plug-ins just to view them! Having an entry-level website allows for the fact that not everyone has or wants to deal with those factors, and makes a potentially much broader audience feel that visiting your website is, with its crisp, clean look, friendly and easy-to-use design and faster page loads, a more welcoming and enjoyable experience.

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