As many as you like. From a search engines point a view - The more the better!

A domain name or web address is the unique name that identifies your website on the Internet (Ours for example is www.franbiks.com). Domain name registration involves an annual charge for the registration. You can visit our domain name registration website at www.franbikswebhost.com to register, transfer or check the availability of your website domain  name.

Your website must be hosted somewhere on a server. There are many hosting companies that offer this service. The price and functions for hosting accounts vary widely by service provider. What functions you need for your website depends on the type of site you have. For example, if your website is an e-Commerce site, meaning you will be selling products and accepting payments online, your hosting account will need to have a MySQL database for secure data storage and a SSL certificate for encrypted payment transmissions. If you already have a hosting account we will check to make sure all of the necessary functions you need come with your hosting account. We offer top quality hosting at www.franbikswebhost.com

In the majority of cases a meeting isn't necessary and most of our websites are generally completed with contact via email and telephone only.

The timescale of a website design project is often dictated by the client. If you have a deadline in mind we will endeavor to meet it for you. The most common delay in the creation and completion of a new website is waiting for content (text/images) to be sent to us by the client. Generally,website design can take  2 - 4 weeks to complete, depending on the complexity of the site and functions you want.

This depends on how you are going to use it. If you are going to be telling people over the phone, choose one that is easy to say and spell out loud. Above all, I would choose one that is memorable and not confusing.

You can take payments online in a number of ways. The first is PayPal - this an inexpensive way to start taking payments quickly, especially if you don't have a merchant account. With PayPal, your visitors can pay you with a credit card or by sending a payment from their checking account (echeck). PayPal provides a shopping cart and many other free services that are helpful to sites that are starting out. They charge 2.9% +$.30 per transaction and have no start-up fees. The downsides are that PayPal is not a very customizable solution, and it can have a “start-up” feel. However, this is changing and many mainstream sites are now accepting PayPal as more and more people have PayPal accounts. PayPal is inexpensive both because there are no merchant account of payment gateway fees, but also because PayPal provides a very easy way to integrate their shopping cart into your site, which reduces development time.

A similar solution just for non-profits is Network for Good, which allows you to accept credit card donations on your site. They charge 3% of each transaction.

Another inexpensive option is a free solution called Mal's e-commerce. Mal's is a shopping cart system that is remotely hosted. With the free version, you can accept PayPal, offline payments like checks, and credit cards if you have your own way to charge them already. It will store the numbers for you to run offline. For $6 a month you can upgrade your cart so it can integrate with a number of popular payment gateways like Authorize.net. There are other fees associated with payment gateways and merchant accounts that you would also be responsible for.

Finally, there is the option of creating a full e-commerce solution. This involves many different components - a merchant account from a bank, a payment gateway service that allows you to accept payments into your merchant account from your website (this is often bundled with the merchant account), a shopping cart or payment script that integrates with your payment gateway, and certain elements of the server environment like having an SSL certificate and a static IP. There are some shopping carts that are available as pre-packaged scripts such as Magento that can be customized for your situation, or a custom payment script can be developed that exactly matches your needs. Full e-commerce is much more expensive and time-consuming to develop than PayPal or Mal's, but it can be integrated into your site for a truly seamless payment experience. It can also save you money in the long run if you are doing a high volume of sales.

A static site is one that is written in HTML only. Each page is a separate document and there is no database that it draws on. What this means functionally is that the only way to edit the site is to go into each page and edit the HTML - so you'd either have to do it yourself using a webpage editor like FrontPage or pay us to go in and edit the site each time you wanted something changed.

A dynamic site is written using more complex code and can do a lot more. For instance, We can make an area where you can log in and change various parts of the site, such as adding information or products. This is because each page is constructed based on the information in a database, and the information in that database can be changed via another interface.

Dynamic sites can reduce ongoing maintenance costs if you don't want to change things yourself with a webpage editor or with the HTML. They usually cost more to develop, as they require more complex coding and a content management utility needs to be developed to help you manage your website information.

Another benefit of dynamic sites is that they allow you to change only the content of the site and not the design, so you will not be able to accidentally break the visual style of the site. They have other benefits when sites start to get very large, as they make data management much more efficient and your site more expandable.

Many clients do a combination, having some dynamic areas such as a product catalog where they have to change information or pictures regularly, and leave other pages such as contact information as static pages.

A CMS or website manager as we call technically stands for Content Management System. Our sites are built in a database and are dynamic. The CMS is the manager or administrator that helps you manage that content from any internet connection. It is what allows you to manage your site without having to know a bunch of html or having to own a bunch of different sotware packages.  A site that is not built in a CMS is really limited in what it can accomplish and how quickly it can expand.

All our websites are created with search engines in mind and the website design is compliant with search engine guidelines. It is a good idea for your website to be re-evaluated in time as over a period of time the search engines do alter their rules and algorithms and you will want to be certain that your website is kept up to date and complies with new rules etc.

We fully support any website we design and are always available should you encounter any problems or require any enhancements. We offer web site maintenance so that your website need never get out of date.

If you have decided you want a web site or have any questions, simply fill out our web design quote request form to start the process.

Web hosting is a monthly fee that you pay to have your site accessible on the Internet. We can provide web hosting for our clients.

Site maintenance is a fee paid monthly to keep your site updated with new content that you provide. Most good web sites have new content updated regularly. Fresh content is what will keep your visitors coming back. This is an optional service that we provide for our customers. If you want to maintain your website yourself you can do so.