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My experience with 99designs.com
Written by Jase Clamp Monday, 29 November 2010 00:00
I recently tried out a service you may or may not have heard of called 99designs. I used it to have a logo designed at a cost effective price.
Eternal Life Harvest Church New Website
Written by Jase Clamp Friday, 26 November 2010 00:00
WinWorld recently had the pleasure of working with Eternal Life Harvest Church on their website upgrade. ELHC took advantage of one of our feature packed "Church Packages." Our Church Packages offer exceptional value to churches since they contain a fully custom design along with a number of powerful features such as a fader, dropdown menus, calendaring, donations and more. We were able to quickly gather design information from ELHC using our online design form. We built the design into our content management system, Steller, and after recieving the included one-on-one training, they inserted all of their own text and pictures.
At WinWorld, we're excited about helping ministries take their web-outreach to the next level in a cost effective manner.
See below for screenshots of the new design.
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| Click to enlarge |
The Cheapest Website Obtainable on the Internet Today
Written by Jase Clamp Tuesday, 23 November 2010 22:40
After working with the Internet for 10 years, you tend to learn a few of the shortcuts that are out there to gain a good website on the cheap. We're solutions provider so we're who people pay when they want a professional implementation performed to specification - with the confidence to know it's done right since we've done it before. We price things based on the amount of time it takes so a project that takes us 5 days would cost maybe $5000. Our time costs money but, if you have your own time to burn, you can gain a fairly decent website yourself without having to shell out all that cash. I thought I'd go ahead a put together a few tips on how to get a good website up and running as cheaply as possible.
Should I be seeking a content management system?
Written by Jase Clamp Thursday, 14 October 2010 00:00
A content management system (CMS) is a web-based system that lets you manage the content on your website. Some examples of content management systems on the market today are Joomla, Drupal, Wordpress (blog), etc. These CMSes require no special software to use. All of the tools for editing and formatting text, placing pictures, links, videos, etc., are right within the web-based administrative login to the website itself. Generally a CMS has a frontend - the custom designed view the public sees that contains your content - and a backend - the admin login you use to manage the settings of your website and the content therein.
I've been doing web development for about a decade. CMSes were just becoming popular when I was getting into the industry. Prior to a CMS, if you wanted to have a presentable website, you not only had to pay someone to build it for you, you also had to pay them to make updates for you. The websites themselves were build out in a format called "static" - that means that every page within the website had it's own "HTML" page. You could use tools like Dreamweaver or Contribute to download the HTML file, make adjustments to the text and then re-upload it.
This approach to content management worked for some but it was prone to issues. Sometimes there would be problems with the file transfer, sometimes there would be issues where parts of the HTML belonging to the overall design of the site would get accidentally deleted, breaking the site visually. The model I saw most businesses following in the late 90s was to have an out-sourced web developer on contract or call to make occasional changes to the site.
In the 2000s more people started to use CMSes. A CMS would let you edit content directly within your website without having to pay someone else to do it for you. Changes could be made when you want, where you want. CMSes also have the capability of hosting additional modules, components, or plugins that add or extend functionality. For example, a CMS could easily host a survey or poll on a certain topic.
The benefits of a CMS are obvious. If it saves you time, money and gives you more functional options - its obvious everyone ought to aim to have one. After doing web development for 10 years and working with 100s of people and web-based CMSes - I've come to know that not everyone should seek to have a CMS.
WinWorld introduces support for mobile web development
Written by Jase Clamp Thursday, 14 October 2010 00:00
The other day we launched our first "mobile friendly" view of a website. The website is http://www.voe.org/.
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| Mobile Magento Store | Mobile Frontpage of Website |
If you visit it using the browser in most current mobile smart-phones you'll see a view like this:
The mobile view of their front page includes quicklinks to the most requested features, one can even watch video from the website directly on their phone. When you visit the site using your mobile device, the site automatically detects the mobile browser and displays the alternate compacted view. One can switch back to the standard view just by clicking a link at the bottom of the site.
We're so excited to be introducing this option to all of our clients.
If you have a Steller (Joomla) or Magento system with us, we can set you up with a mobile friendly view of your content. This will give you the assurance that your website is optimized for viewing on the go. Your mobile friendly site can contain the same content your main site does, but you can add extra options considering that viewers are "mobile" - such as a click to dial phone number and a link to driving directions.
More information on adding mobile capabilities to your website are available in our online store.
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