A domain name is www.yourcompanyname.com. Ideally, you would want your domain name to be the same as your business. There are many dot-com designations to choose from .com, .net, .ca, .biz, .org. Hint: When selecting a name, make it short and simple to spell. Avoid words that are commonly misspelled in your domain name.

Next register your domain name, also referred to as a URL (Uniform Resource Locator). Ensure the domain name that you selected has not been registered by someone else. When you register online, ensure you take ownership of the domain name. (Hallo Graphics doesn’t recommend you using the numerous extension services only because if they go out of business, so does your domain name and all of your money you invested on marketing and establishing your website address is gone.) Register your name as soon as possible as many good domain names go fast.

Don’t worry if you don’t have a website. Once you pay for the registration, the registration service will park your domain name until your website is ready. Expect to pay annually for your domain name. Our best suggestion is to register the name for several years, as it is more cost-effective in the long run.

Registration costs start at $10.00 and up.

You can register your domain name with any one of the following companies:

Godaddy.com | www.register.com | www.networksolutions.com | www.domainscanada.ca

Note: If you don’t have the time or are uncomfortable in obtaining your domain name- Hallo Graphics will be happy to secure those services for you for a nominal fee.

All sites are equipped with web-based e-mail. You can go to http://webmail.yourdomain.com.

You need to have a valid email address and password already set up to log in.

You also can configure your emails to your computer, laptop, iPad or smartphone. Check your control panel for directions.

“Content is King!” Website content is the most important element and the main foundation of your website. Gone are the days of tactical SEO practices. It all now boils down to your content. We recommend that you spend some time and thought to develop your content making it concise, informative and engaging to your target market. Included all details about your company you think your users will find useful.

Website Content Steps:

• Set your sites goal – who is your audience? how are they going to use your site?
• Site map- how many pages do you require?
• The content-What will be on the site? Will the content change- how often? Will you focus on selling products with product pages or focus on providing information? Is your content going to be mostly text or images or multimedia?
• Compile Content -Compile your text for all of your web pages.

Accepted File Format:

• Content: .doc /. txt /.pdf
• Company Logo: Accepted File Format: .jpg /.gif /.eps /.png/.psd / .ai
• Photographs or other graphics: Accepted File Format: .jpg /.gif /.png /.pdf

If you don’t have or require content, Hallo Graphics will be happy to help develop your content. If you have a color theme or design layout in mind let us know. It might also be helpful to list few website addresses that you like. Don’t have photographs? You can purchase photos from  www.istockphoto.com. Before any development can start on your website, we require all of your content.

Meta Tags tells the search engine what information to be displayed. META Tags are invisible and part of your HTML code. Some search engines “Spiders” or “Robot” use the information contained within META Tags to index your web page. In most cases, a search engine Spider will grab only the first few words, sentences or paragraphs and use those words as the description and keywords from your web page. META Tags, on the other hand, tell the search engine Spider what information to use.

When properly constructed you can actually control how these robots display your Web page in their search engines. We’re sure you have used a search engine in the past and found the description to be anything but informative. With META Tags you can have the robot display your web page content description the way you want it displayed (within reason of course).

You can also help people find your Web page by providing keywords that describe your page and help drive traffic to your website.

Basic search engine optimization (SEO) is fundamental. And essential. SEO will help you position your website properly to be found at the most critical points in the buying process or when people need your site. Search engines want to do their jobs as best as possible by referring users to websites and content that is the most relevant to what the user is looking for. So how is relevancy determined?

• Content: Is determined by the theme that is being given, the text on the page, and the titles and descriptions that are given.
• Performance: How fast is your site and does it work properly?
• Authority: Does your site have good enough content to link to or do other sites use your website as a reference or cite the information that’s available?
• User Experience: How does the site look? Is it easy to navigate around? Does it look safe? Does it have a high bounce rate?

Cascading Style Sheet language is a computer language used to describe the presentation of structured documents. One modern style sheet language with widespread use is CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), which is used to style documents written in HTML, XHTML and other markup languages. Style Sheets allow you to control the rendering — e.g. fonts, colors, leading, margins, typefaces, and other aspects of style — of a Web document without compromising its structure.

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are a simple style sheet mechanism that allows authors and readers to attach style to Web pages. It uses common desktop publishing terminology which should make it easy for professional as well as untrained designers to make use of its features. Visual design issues, such as page layout, can thus be addressed separately from the Web page logical structure.

One of the main purposes of CSS is to separate the content from the document’s structure. CSS is used to style the content of the document while HTML/XHTML/XML is used to build the structure. That way, once the document is “built”, any changes to the look of the page can be made in the style sheets. The changes are made once and then take effect throughout the entire site. This makes the site much easier to maintain and, if necessary, change a small part of it or its entire format. The concept of style sheets is actually quite simple. You take an element (h1, ul, img), apply attributes to it in the style sheet, and then just use the element in the HTML document.

All of its formatting and other aspects are detailed in the style sheet. However, it’s not all that easy though. Its when we get into layouts, floats, margins, and other different formatting techniques that CSS begins to get a little complicated. But that’s where we come in.

Need More Information? Visit: W3C- Style Sheets

CMS stands for Content Management System and is an open source coding. Which simply means that a community of software developers have pooled their collective genius to create the product and then made it available to all users. The most popular CMS are WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal.

A content management system helps you control your business’s web presence. It can display and manage your products, information, and pricing; time-stamp promotional materials to come off the web when they’re stale; and post SEO- enhanced blogs, articles and news releases to attract new customers who use search engines – best part about it you don’t require any design or programming knowledge to use WordPress or Drupal once the site is established for you.

NOTE: All Content management systems are subject to software updates and security patches so factor that additional monthly expense if you do not know how to do the updates.

Once you have complied and submitted all of your website content (i.e. text, logo, photos), construction of your site can start right away with a 50% deposit. Website development process time varies.

On average 3 to 5 working days for a small business site and up to 6 weeks or more for complex sites. All website pricing will be quoted by your companies project requirements.

1. Please contact your hosting company directly – maybe you forgot to renew your hosting plan?

2. You will also want to check that you renewed your domain name with your registrar.

If your domain name has expired, your website will be down.

Registering your website for several years is recommended.

Website Maintenance / Website Support / Upgrading of your website. It is very important to update and maintain your website, at least annually. Product and services change frequently so if there is nothing new to draw attention back to your site, you are letting the full potential of your website go to waste. By keeping your site current you maintain your client’s interest. Content is not just the only maintenance required for a site. Your HTML code must be considered. Hallo Graphics can streamline and clean up your HTML, DHTML code, enhance meta tags, or add cascading style sheets to your existing site.

Making your site compatible with the standards set by the WWW Consortium keeps your site current and supported by the web browsers. Hallo Graphics website complies with the W3C standards and we are happy to support W3C by producing such sites. The various web browsers: Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Opera are constantly producing new versions of their product to support the fastest technology and programming. Should your website not do the same?

If you wish to maintain your own site and require the knowledge, Hallo Graphics is able to provide you either phone or on-site support for an additional fee. We can also refer you to an accredited teacher or institution. Hallo Graphics will be happy to provide you with website maintenance, support and upgrade services.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) develops interoperable technologies (specifications, guidelines, software, and tools) to lead the Web to its full potential. W3C is a forum for information, commerce, communication, and collective understanding.

W3C primarily pursues its mission through the creation of Web standards and guidelines. Since 1994, W3C has published more than 110 such standards, called W3C Recommendations. W3C also engages in education and outreach, develops software, and serves as an open forum for discussion about the Web.

In order for the Web to reach its full potential, the most fundamental Web technologies must be compatible with one another and allow any hardware and software used to access the Web to work together. W3C refers to this goal as “Web interoperability.” By publishing open (non-proprietary) standards for Web languages and protocols, W3C seeks to avoid market fragmentation and thus Web fragmentation.

“So what!” you say to yourself… “means nothing to me!” Yes- it does, these standards make your website compatible with all the different web browsers on the market.