Design FAQs
For many people, getting into the World Wide Web seems to be a daunting task. Others are already involved, feel somewhat confident, but need to know more about an area or have specific questions. To ask a question not found below, use our Contact Us page.
Below are some Frequently Asked Questions and our answers to them.
- Q. How does the process of building a custom web site work?
- Q. Can I register a domain name through Profit Gate?
- Q. What does "hosting a site" mean and do you provide hosting?
- Q. If I decide not to buy hosting services from Profit Gate, are there any special requirements my host needs to have?
- Q. What marketing services do you offer?
- Q. I've heard of Meta-tags. What are they and do you put them on my site?
1. Q. How does the process of building a custom web site work?
A. The first step is called the "architecture" of the site. It starts with getting information from you. We collect any photos or graphics (like logos) you may want and text content for the pages. This stage not only covers the design concept of the site but also the navigation of it (which page will link to which page, etc.). The architecture is critical as the whole site is based on it.
Mock-ups (or artistic renditions) of the site are provided to you very fast - usually within a few days. From here we work to finalize the artwork and it then moves to the next phase.
Page creation. Once you decide on a particular look we get very busy building the pages with your content, pictures, graphics, etc. After this is done you are requested to check it for approval and after any adjustments are made this part is complete.
Concurrent with the pages being created if there are any e-commerce or other programming functions needed they are done. This includes shopping carts, forums, user interfaces (username/password and private information), order tracking panels, etc.
Regular updates are provided as the project moves forward and revisions are made until completion.
2. Q. Can I register a domain name through Profit Gate?
A. Absolutely! This is an important service we offer. On our Domain Registration page you can search for various names and register them -- you don't have to purchase other services from us to use this service, and the prices we offer are excellent!
3. Q. What does "hosting a site" mean and do you provide hosting?
A. Hosting refers to where your web site is stored. Everything you see on the internet is saved on a computer somewhere. Hosting companies offer high powered computers for this purpose. Some offer the service for free -- in exchange for you allowing them to advertise on your site -- while others charge fees large and small.
Think of hosting as rent. Your site needs a piece of real-estate for people to visit it. Once your site "moves in" to its new home it can have users visit. The quality of the hosting is a big issue and there are many opinions on the subject. The main points to consider are:
a) The number of sites hosted on each server. Some cheap hosting companies cram a tremendous number of web sites onto one server. While this sounds like good business sense, what it means to you is that server will not have its full computing resources available at any given time because it's trying to serve so many. Imagine you were serving guests for dinner, but instead of 6 or 8 guests you had 900! The quality of your service would be poor at best, non-existent at worse.
b) The amount of disk space you are purchasing. Many inexpensive hosting companies offer tremendous disk space for next to nothing. The old adage, "You get what you pay for" applies. Imagine what a building lot might cost in your area. Now imagine a company offering 10 acres of land for the same price as that one lot! It's not very likely they'll stay in business very long, or they're not really giving you what you paid for.
c) The amount of bandwidth you are purchasing. Generally speaking, bandwidth is the amount of data transmitted or received per unit time. This takes the resources of the server computer to "hand it out". This has everything to do with the above 2 items. If you have a host that puts a ton of sites on one server you can see that bandwidth will become a problem as soon as any volume of visitors comes to your site. Why? Because the computing power of that server will be spread too thin.
Overly cheap hosting (meaning promises of overly high disk space and tremendous bandwidth for a small fee) is meant for sites that are failures. Why do we say this? Because the host doesn't think you'll ever amount to anything traffic-wise, so can offer this tremendous "deal". The people with sites listed on these types of servers generally aren't expecting much in the way of traffic so they're "safe". We expect volume traffic to our sites -- particularly business-related sites that take advantage of our marketing services.
B. And yes we offer inexpensive hosting, but it's realistically priced, relative to what you're paying for - this way neither of us gets ripped off. See our Hosting page.
4. Q. If I decide not to buy hosting services from Profit Gate, are there any special requirements my host needs to have?
A. No. We build all websites within "industry standards". Most servers that host web sites are either Windows based or Unix based (these are two different operating systems that handle computing tasks in unique ways). In either case we've got you covered. If Profit Gate builds your site, it will function on any standard host server.
5. Q. What marketing services do you offer?
A. This is an excellent question. After all, what good is a web site if no one comes to see it and use it? Besides getting your site into search engines and directories on the internet (which is vital if people are to find you by searching for you) there are other marketing strategies to take advantage of.
We offer a service called Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Imagine someone doing a search on Google, Bing, AOL, or Yahoo, and right there on the first page, is your web site! Profit Gate does this for Clients routinely.
Another marketing service we offer is PayPerClick Ad Management. We can set up, manage, and keep your ad campaign on budget for you.
Call Dan Lewis at Profit Gate for more details. 727-585-3850 or Toll-Free 1-866-814-8577.
6. Q. I've heard of Meta-tags. What are they and do you put them on my site?
A. Meta-tags are basically words or commands put on a web page that browsers, search engines and directories can see but are invisible to visitors to your site. One of these tags is used to display a title on your browser (if you look at the very top of your browser this page says, "Design FAQs - Tampa's Best Web Design"). There are other tags that do various things.
Search engines and directories used to look for a meta-tag regarding key words — you'd list the key words describing the content of your web page and they would index your site accordingly. The more relevant the words were the better chance you had of your site being pulled up in a search by someone. However, this was heavily abused and as a result, the major search engines look for these tags as only a small part of the whole ranking score.
B. We will use whichever meta-tags are relevant and appropriate for your site.
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Tampa Web Design