How to commission a new website

This article should act as your homework before you or your organisation invests in developing a website.

The Jargon

What is a domain?

A domain is simply an entry in a directory. No too long ago names didn’t exist and if you wanted to find a website you typed in a number like 195.88.100.33 which was its address on the internet . Now you type in a name like mywebsite.co.uk and then a ‘Domain Name Server’ looks for that name in its directory and sees that my website.co.uk is located at 195.88.100.33 and then you get to see the website located at 195.88.100.33.

Domain hosting is the cost of keeping that entry on a ‘Name Server’ – usually somewhere around £5 - 10 a year and slightly more expensive for .com domains.

What is Web Hosting

Often confused with, domain hosting, this is space on a server where your website files will reside. You could theoretically host your website on your own computer at home but if the site became busy your computer would probably get overloaded. As well as this if you do not have the technical know-how to ensure adequate security on the machine hosting the website then your computer might get hacked. For these reasons there are companies which specialise in providing hosting for web sites on computers with the right kind of specifications, security and backups. The level of service they provide does however vary greatly. There are three main types of hosting:

• Shared hosting
• Virtual private hosting
• Dedicated server

Shared Hosting

In this scenario, your website is hosted on the one server along with a bunch of other sites. The setup on the server is the same for all sites. If one site gets really busy then the other sites will slow down. Shared hosting is normally very cheap and under a £100 a year. However technical support is problematic as the hosting company is offering cheap hosting and therefore can’t afford to offer a high quality support service. Typically you will get access to front line support reasonably quickly but they will be working of a stock list of problems and solutions and won’t have significant technical expertise beyond this. Getting beyond front line support to a higher level can take much longer.

We have a had a mixture of experiences with shared hosting companies ranging from no problems to a website becoming unavailable for over a fortnight whilst we awaited response from technical support. When we did get a response it came in the form of a question – ‘Are you still having this problem?’ – our answer to that was very simple – ‘No as we’ve have moved the website to another hosting company and no longer require your services’.

Virtual Private Servers

In this scenario a computer (server) is split up into smaller ‘virtual slices’. Each slice can have its own operating system and can be isolated from the other slices. So when one slice gets busy the others don’t. You can also customise your hosting platform (if you have the technical ability) to suit the needs of your website. This level of hosting is effectively a step up from shared hosting and typically costs anything from around £300 upwards a year.

Dedicated Servers

You get your very own server maintained in some air conditioned secure data centre and you get to do whatever you want to it. You will need to have a high level of technical expertise to administer it. Normally you can expect optimal performance of your website with this kind of hosting, provided it’s all set up OK by your techs. Dedicated servers tend to be used by large business with mission critical websites and for whom a few grand a year for web hosting is a minor cost.

Content Management Systems (CMS)

It’s pretty much the norm these days for websites to have a CMS sitting behind them which allows clients to update their own websites with no web design expertise. They can be categorised in a number of ways:

• Open Source (free) or Proprietary (not free)
• Standard vs Enterprise level CMSs
• Windows based vs Linux based

Open Source

Open source CMSs are developed by companies and then made available licence free. The idea behind this is to get the global developer community to support it through bug fixing, module creation and upgrades.
Although an Open Source CMS is billed as free you still have to figure out how to install it and get your website looking nice and unless you are a web developer you’ll need a company to do that for you. They won’t be charging licence fees for the CMS but just costing their time for installation.

Pros:

• This is an open solution that doesn’t tie you to the company who developed your site. The software used for updating your website is freely available.
• Upgrades and extensions are constantly being rolled out by developers enabling your site to develop. An open source CMS typically has a huge number of extensions available.
• Help documentation will be available online
• A large community of developers who know the CMS will be available to tap into
• Security patches will be rolled out on a regular basis
• As there are no licence costs, it’s usually more cost effective than proprietary solutions
• Often the functionality of an open source CMS will outperform that of a proprietary CMS as most companies simply won’t have the resources to develop and maintain a
• Open source CMSs need a robust but flexible framework behind them as they are being used by the global developer community. This forces the CMS to be easy to develop and hence cost effective to develop with

Cons:

• Sometimes the extensions which are developed by different people don’t work well together and will require developers to debug
• Just because a company is offering you an open source CMS in no way guarantees their expertise in installing and configuring it. It is easy for a company to set up on day one and on day two start offering open source CMSs.

Proprietary

A proprietary CMS is one which has been developed by a company in-house and then is sold with a licence.  It’s their take on what makes a good CMS and they have to charge for it to justify the expense of their development.
Pros:

• The company selling the proprietary CMS will know it inside out and what it can and can’t do.
• What it does do it often does well.

Cons:

• The number of extensions available will be usually far less than that of an open source CMS making the site harder to extend
• You will be wholly dependent on that one company and its resources. If something happens to that company the lifecycle of the site will be effectively at an end.
• As the CMS is licensed and the software copyrighted it is unlikely you will be able to pass maintenance of the site to another company if the relationship sours.
• Sometimes a proprietary CMS can be the brainchild of one developer in one company which can make for a highly precarious life cycle.

How should I choose a supplier?

You should ask the following questions:

• What is your daily rate?
• What platform is being developed on?
• What CMS will be installed?
• What sites have you developed using this CMS?
• What type of hosting is being offered?
• What maintenance agreements will there be?
• What is your hourly rate for technical support?
• Who works in your team and what experience do they have?
• When was the supplier company formed?

1 What is the supplier’s daily rate?

Sadly the daily rate of a company can often be taken as an indicator of their expertise. It isn’t. In our experience the larger the supplier and the smaller you are the harder they will find it to deliver a satisfactory service within your budget. Large suppliers usually need large clients with big budgets.

As well as the mismatch in budget, if they don’t value you highly enough they won’t go the extra mile for you. So ask yourself, are you the type of client they would value?

2 What platform is being developed on?

Put simply if the platform is Windows then you will be working with .NET developers who don’t come cheap. They could argue though that .NET and all the software belonging to the Microsoft suite offer a compelling business case. It’s mostly licensed though and some of the licences are expensive. There are some very nice open source .NET CMSs available, such as Umbraco.

If the platform is Linux then you will be working in most cases with PHP developers who do come cheap and there are a lot of them. They do however vary greatly in quality. There are lots of open source applications that run on PHP which may offer everything you need to run and grow your business.

You need to look at your existing business applications and needs and ensure the web site platform integrates with them. Remember the future of software is on the web and not as desktop applications.

3 What CMS will be installed?

We are constantly amazed by how little interest clients will show in the CMS, the assumption being they are all pretty much the same beast. They aren’t. Some are a great deal more usable than others. Some are so appallingly cumbersome to use the client gives up trying. Some are very rigid and offer an admin dashboard which you have to fit in with. Others allow the dashboard to be configured to your needs and the terminology changed to one you understand. How easy is it to do the following?

• Insert an image (resize it/crop it) – does it do real re-sizing!
• Format text using the WYSIWYG – can you add headings? Does the format of text in the WYSIWYG mirror the format of the text on the finished page?
• Link to pdfs or other media
• Insert a video
• News item
• Event (in a calendar)
• Change footer details, header images etc

Ask for a demonstration, which you can have a go on and have a good go on it. Don’t just let them show you. If you can just use it without having to figure out how to use it then that’s a good sign. Some CMSs have their own terminology and they call pages unintuitive things like ‘article’ – bad sign.

4 What sites has the supplier developed using this CMS?

Many CMSs are available off the shelf indeed all open source CMSs are ‘off the shelf’. You’d need a very, very good reason for asking for a custom built CMS. And lots of money too. Unfortunately there are many companies out there who just don’t have enough expertise or experience to carry out a good implementation of the CMS. Typically they will tell you it can’t do this and that and that’s probably because they don’t know enough about it. So find out how experienced they are by asking how many times they have implemented this CMS and for who.

5 What type of hosting is being offered?

Avoid shared hosting if you can afford it. Web hosting companies simply can’t afford to offer serious technical support when they are only charging £75 a year.  So when things go wrong, it may take some time to resolve. At the very least ensure you are getting virtual or dedicated hosting.

6 What maintenance and support will there be?

Again if you can afford it, then some form of maintenance agreement which allows you to ring them up and ask how to do things using their CMS is pretty useful. Otherwise you will have to rely on documentation to guide you through and that might just stop you dead in your tracks.

• Will you get a dedicated account manager?
• Will the site be monitored and you informed when it is down
• How often are backups?
• Will you be able to rollback the site to an earlier version (useful if it gets compromised)?
• What is the hourly rate for tech support outside of any agreed maintenance package?

7 Who works in the Supplier team?

It’s as well as to meet the team who will be delivering services. It has to be said though that some developers prefer to be left alone to do clever stuff and have poor client facing skills. What is useful is to see their CVs so you can gauge the collective experience of the team. What projects have they worked on previously?

8 Check the supplier company’s details on companies house.

You can find their turnover and profit on their companies’ house return – it costs £1 to order.  Bear in mind that profit can be manipulated but turnover can’t. Possibly the most useful information you can get is whether their companies house accounts are in order – if not, beware!

For more information please contact Phil Smears on 0151 223 0001. Alternatively please visit www.sdesign1.com.