Frequently asked questions
There are many questions to consider in designing and developing a website. Here are some questions that have passed across our desk about websites, domain names and hosting.
How long does it
take to design and develop a website?
The short answer is that it depends on a range of factors, including:
1. Any special requirements.
2. The provision of content from the client for the site.
3. The extent of changes requested by a client at any point.
4. Your availability to be actively involved in decisions at stages of the
website development.
A good rule of thumb for a small website is 4 - 6 weeks for all stages of design and development to be completed. A draft site can normally be created within a week to provide clients with a foundation for further work.
If you have an urgent job that needs to be done in a shorter time, please discuss your needs with us. We have access to a range of personnel to help us manage rush jobs.
How much choice
do I get in the website design?
We'll work with you to draft up 2 different styles for your site based on a range of questions we provide you with. You'll be able to choose the one that best meets your overall needs, after which we will continue to work with you to refine the design.
How much does a
website cost?
Please link to our Website design services page for information on costs and fees.
Do you maintain
websites and if so how much does it cost?
Yes we do. Please link to our Website maintenance services page for information on costs and fees.
I would like a website
but I don't know where to start. Can you help?
Yes we are able to support organisations, businesses and individuals through all the stages of website design and development. Check our Getting Started page for an overview of the stages of creating a website.
What hosting service
should I use?
The answer is that you should use the hosting service that can best support the functionality you need for your site and that you can afford. When you become a Moving Lines customer we will provide you with the support you need to make a hosting decision.
What's metadata?
Metadata is a set of data describing a web document. Metadata is generally "hidden" from you when you are browsing the web, although you can see it if you choose to view a page source. The purpose of metadata is to tell your browser software how to handle a web page, and to tell search engines what your web page is about.
How can I improve
my site's rating on search engines?
Simple : relevance, relevance, relevance. By creating a site that contains information that is highly relevant to your users you build the foundations needed for improving your site's search engine ranking.
Our goal, as web developers, is to firstly register your site on a range of search engines, using good metadata for the content of your site, and secondly to make it a highly useful site to which other websites will link.
Here's some specific things that help with improving your site's visibility:
Selecting a few effective words and phrases for your metadata that effectively and specifically describe your page's content.
Finding a balance between specific terms and ones that are broad enough to have high visibility in search engine requests. Use a keyword analyser tool to help you analyse how often your selected terms are used on search engines. Its helpful to use as specific a term or phrase as possible. If your term is too specific though, look for an additional relevant broader term or phrase that has high visibility in search engines and that you can use effectively in the content of your site.
Aligning the title metatag with a metadata keyword or phrase.
Using tools such as Google's keyword selector, the Ontology Finder or Lexical Freenet to help with choosing effective terms for your metadata and content. You can even try to cover common misspellings with a tool like Searchspell.
Not repeating words and phrases in the metadata keywords tag. Search engines don't like it.
Making sure that the selected words and phrases are used in the metadata, are used appropriately in the text and are high up in the content of your page including both headings, content and any content in bold. Find a balance. If you overdo it, the search engine may reject your page as spam.
Trying to use text for the page navigation, rather than images. CSS can be helpful here.
Creating deep linking within your site. Pages at the top level of your site should link to each other, as well as contain links to other content within your site.
Want to see your web page the way a search engine does? Check this simulation of how a search engine spider sees a webpage. You'll soon see where you have gaps.
What
is Accessibility all about?
Accessibility is all about ensuring that people with disabilities are able to use websites irrespective of their disability. Accessibility is achieved by web developers conforming as a minimum to Priority 1 Accessbility Guidelines as set out by W3C.
As a quick guide the following tips are provided for web developers as a working guide.
Images & animations: Use the alt attribute to describe the function of each visual.
Image maps. Use the client-side map and text for hotspots.
Multimedia. Provide captioning and transcripts of audio, and descriptions of video.
Hypertext links. Use text that makes sense when read out of context. For example, avoid "click here."
Page organization.Use headings, lists, and consistent structure. Use CSS for layout and style where possible.
Graphs & charts. Summarize or use the longdesc attribute.
Scripts, applets, & plug-ins. Provide alternative content in case active features are inaccessible or unsupported.
Frames. Use the noframes element and meaningful titles.
Tables. Make line-by-line reading sensible. Summarize.
Check your work. Validate. Use tools, checklist, and guidelines at http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG
What's
a favicon
A favicon is a small website specific image that shows up in the address bar of Mozilla based browsers. Browsers such as Firefox, Mozilla itself, and Netscape are Mozilla based browsers. If you are using one of these browser types look at the address bar of this page and you'll see a little icon in front of this URL for the page. That's a favicon (short for favourite icon).
The purpose of the favicon is to enable easy bookmarking of a webpage. Want to try it out? Using a Mozilla based browser:
Open the bookmarks toolbar - View > Toolbars
Click on the favicon
Drag and drop it onto the bookmarks toolbar.
That's all there is to it. The site now becomes a favourite site that can be reached in one click from your bookmarks toolbar.