JTL Web Design

The reasons why someone needs a website are are almost endless. Some may want it for their business, in order to help advertise their store, or even sell their products online. Some may want a place for family and friends to to share photos and keep everyone updated on what is happening with everyone else. Many Emergency Service Agencies will want to share information about themselves as well as help educate the public for safety and awareness. You may even just want somewhere to blog and share photos about your self. Whatever your reason, we are here to provide a solution to fit your needs.

The time it takes to build a site depends greatly on how big the site is going to be, what features will be included, and how prepared you are when we start. We have found over time, that one of the largest delays is waiting on the customer to provide us with content (pictures, text, layout ideas, etc...) for the site. The more prepared you are when we start, the faster it will go. An average site takes 1-2 weeks to build, but if there are a lot of features being included, it can take longer. We can give you a more acurate estimate when we give you your quote.

Absolutely!! We offer a variety of options when it comes to E-Commerce. The Shopping Cart systems we offer integrate seamlessly and are designed to accept payments with PayPal. We are willing to configure your store to work with whatever payment system you prefer, but we recommend PayPal due to its ease of configuration and well known reputation of being safe and secure.

Not a problem. We have a few different photo galleries that we can use that allow your visitors to sign up and post photos. You can even specify if they have to post in their own folder or in predetermined public folder. Photos and Albums can even be set to private so only users given the proper password can access them. They can also be setup to where everyone, or only registered users can see them. The options are almost endless.

Absolutely. We offer 45 days of minor updates at no charge once a site is completed to allow you to have some time to fine tune your site. If a couple weeks down the road you see something you want a little different, we don't want you to feel stuck with it. We also offer custom maintenance plans with different levels of work included or if you feel that your site would only need a couple changes here and there, you can also request work done on an individual basis.. Feel free to ask more about these options at anytime using our Customer Support System.
As far as support on using your site, we want to make sure you are able to use the Administration System of your site to the fullest. 60 days of Tech Support is included with all sites as well beginning when the site is delivered. To receive assistance, simply login to our Customer Support System. Many times, the answer to your question can be found by searching the Knowledgebase or by reading the manuals located in the Downloads. If not, feel free to Submit a Ticket to request assistance.

Usually. Certain features such as the photo gallery are updateable by you. We also have a new feature we began offering allowing you to update regions in a page using a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor. We would build the base page, then include a section inside it that you would be able to go to your sites Admin Area and edit the content in that section. The WYSIWYG editor allows you to do quite a bit as far as inserting pictures, text, tables, links, and more. And having this dynamic section inserted into a base, static page, allows you to have a page you can update as you desire, and still have the page always match the rest of the site. We will ahve a demo of this feature coming soon.

We also can offer you a full CMS application for your entire site. A full CMS (Content Management System) based site, will give you 100% control over the site. You can add new pages and features as you wish without a lot of technical knowledge. These CMS sites typically take longer to setup and will require you to have hosting at the start as they are 100% database driven and we can not start it on our server then move it like we do regular site. The longer setup is because we will completely customize the template included with the application for you to resemble how you want your site to look and these apps require a lot of work to modify like this. However, once we modify the template for you, you will be good to go and can manage the site yourself. The CMS apps also let you have sections that are 100% public and sections that only registered users can see to help keep some stuff private. Great for family websites and organizations who want the public to see who they are, but have some content for members only. You can also assign members to be author and editor as well so they can assist with articles and pages on the site.

There are several things you need to consider when you are planning a website, and these things differ depending on what type of site you are wanting.
For example, someone who wants a website for their family, does not need an online store, but would most likely want a photo album that users can add to, as well as a forum to share stories, and a calendar that users could put important dates into.
Someone wanting a site for their business most likely would not want need the photo gallery for users to upload too, but may want a gallery for them to post pictures for users to view. They also may be interested in an online store if they are wanting to sell items online. See our page on Website Planning for more details on how to plan your site, based on your needs.

Here is a list of things you will want to have when you contact us about building your site.

1. An idea of what you want the pages to look like.
• Color's you like
• Background Images (have more than one, as some images don't do well when text is placed over them
• Any photos you want placed around the site. (Not the photos for the gallery, you will be able to add those yourself)
• Write out a rough draft of the text you would like on the pages
2. What features/pages you are wanting
3. If it's an online store, about how many products are you wanting to sell? Whereas most of the online stores we work with have unlimited products and categories, some do better with larger stores and some do better on smaller stores
4. What you want to collect from your users on the contact forms, if you want them
5. A list of any detailed questions you have before work actaully starts

Of course, this list does not cover everything, but we can work with you once we know what you are wanting from your site, to determine exactly what we need from you.

A website is actually nothing more than a group of files, folders, and images stored on a Server (fancy name for a powerful computer). When someone visits your website, they are actually being connected directly to that Server, and their browser downloads the files needed to display the page they are looking at. Whereas almost any computer can be a server, it also requires special software to handle the incoming visitors and tell their browsers where the files and folders are that they want to see, based on the website they are trying to visit. A typical server can easily handle hundreds, if not thousands of websites. A server also requires a very fast, dedicated internet connection.
Hosting, is when you are paying someone to do all of the following for you.

1. Store your files on their server
2. Handle the traffic that is looking for your website and tell them where your files are
3. Provide the powerful internet connection needed to allow as many viewers as want to view your site at any one time to be able to see it at the same time
4. A Web Host also does many other small things to keep your site online and viewable.

Not at this time. Currently, we are still a small operation, which allows us to better serve our customers and keep prices down. We do however work closely with one of the best hosting companies in the world, 1&1.

A "Domain" name is simply the address for your website. For example, our Domain name at JTL Web Design is "jtlwebdesign.com". The www is not actually part of the sites name, which is why most websites work with and without the www in front of the rest of the name. Also, many site names are available under multiple TLD's or Top Level Domains. The TLD is simply the end of the sites address. The most common are

• .com
• .net
• .org
• .biz
• .info
• .us
• .tv
• .name
• .gov (only available to federal and state agencies)
• .mobi (websites for Mobile Devices)

If your website's name is not available as a .com, you can always check for the other TLD's.

We try to work as much as possible with 1&1 for our customers hosting. We have worked with all the major hosts out there and for the overall value, ease of use, and reliabilty, 1&1 just can not be beat. A few customers have been concerned because they haven't heard of them like they have GoDaddy, but consider this, if GoDaddy is spending that much on marketing, how much is left over for their services. 1&1 has been rated repeatedly as the top hosting company in the world. We recommend the Linux-Business package from them. Linux hosting if preferred by most designers over Microsoft hosting as it is more adaptable, secure, and functional. You do not have to know anything about Linux to use it. It makes no difference on your viewers end, as then end result is simply HTML Web Language the browser processes. The Linux-Business Package typically runs 9.99/month and it also includes 3 Domain Names with the hosting at no additional charge, where most other hosts charge for the domain name on top of the hosting. Feel free to use the banner at the bottom of this page to visit 1&1's website, (will open in a new window) to check out what is included with the package. We understand that most people won't know what all that means, so here is the key points.

• 3 Domains Included free
• Free Private Registration (better for security and preventing spam, as it makes it harder for someone to see who owns the domain and having information they shouldn't have about you)
• Web Space 250gb - A website is nothing more than a bunch of files, folders, and images stored on someones computer. All of this takes up space, especially if you start hosting photo galleries or videos on your site. 250gb is more than enough for most websites out there today, with the exception of youtube and sites like that.
• Monthly Transfer - Everytime someone visits your site, their browser downloads the files and images it needs to display that page for the viewer. If your page has 4 pictures on it, at 1mb each, then everytime someone loads that page, they are downloading 4mb of data. This data transfer is called Bandwidth, or Transfer Volume. 1&1 now offers unlimited transfer, so now it doesn't matter how many times your site is viewed, it won't cost you any extra like it does with a lot of other hosts.
• Email Accounts and Mailbox Space - You get 2,500 accounts, with 2gb of storage. Other hosts limit the amount of storage per account to anywhere from 5-150mb. GoDaddy in particular advertises anywhere from 500mb-3gb of storage, but they are limited to sharing 100mb per 10 email accounts on their system. 1&1 offers the full 2gb to be shared between all of them, so if one person uses more, and one uses less, there is no special configuration needed. It just works.
• Server Side Includes (SSI) - This is actually the biggest reason we insist on at least getting the Business Package. SSI is something that makes your site easy to update if we add or remove pages. Your sites Header and Footer (The top and bottom of the site, including the menus) are actually seperate files from the rest of the page. The page that is loaded calls the header and footer files using SSI and displays them at the top and bottom. By holding the menus in these files, if you add a page later, we don't have to go back and edit every single page just to add the page to the menu. We simply edit the header and footer files and then it is now available across the entire site. Also, many features, such as photo galleries and shopping carts depend heavily on these to work properly.

It depends on who you hosting is with, and what features your host offers. You can email us at Contact@JTLWebDesign.com and let us know who your host is and what package you have with them, and we will let you know if we can work with it. We do strongly prefer 1&1, but are willing to use your current host, if it meets our requirements.

You can use this form below to check and see if your domain is available. It will display the results in a new window.

The cost of building websites vary greatly depending on what you want your site to do. For this reason, it is not possible to provide a general answer for this question. Please feel free to fill out the form on our Pricing page for a free quote.

All sites have a free 45 day, minor update plan included. We do this because sometimes it takes a couple of weeks for someone to notice something on their site they want done a little different and we don't want you to feel stuck with it. All major updates and adding of additional pages or features will be priced on an idividual basis and will depend of if you are in a maintenance contract with us or not. For more details on updates and maintenance, visit our Customer Support area and you can submit a ticket for an estimate of the changes you want done, or request a quote on a maintenance contract.

Not from us, or 1&1. We are upfront about the cost of building your site, and also about how much updates will cost in the future. Our hosting partners prices are very clear as well and are based on your package. The recommended package runs $9.99/month, typically billed quartely and there is usually a $9-$10 onetime setup fee. If you have an e-commerce site, you will have fees from PayPal per transaction, just like if you were selling on eBay. These fees are pretty competitive with other payment processors out there. For most websites out there, that is the only costs involved in having a website.

We will request 35%-50% when the contract is accepted and the remainder will be do upon the sites completion. For most websites, you do not need to start paying for hosting until your site is closer to being finished as we will build the site on our server and you will be sent a link to where you, and anyone else you want to watch the development can see it's progress. When the site is between 50%-75% completed, we will need you to obtain hosting so we can start setting up the databases and making minor code changes to reflect the sites permanent location online.