Development

We develop content managed websites for businesses and not-for-profit organisations using our well established Content Management System.

In the vast majority of cases we provide this service in collaboration with our Design Partners.

This page describes how we do this once the requirements for the site have been defined.

We can also provide more customised solutions.

Page Designs

Our CMS uses templates for different pages in the site, so what we need to build them are designs for each different page layout to be used on the web site, not every page. Typically on a small site this is three or four different layouts each containing some filler text and/or images.

Examples of common page layouts are:

Home Page - in most modern sites the home page has a unique layout.
Main Section Page - a layout for pages reached from the main, top level menu items.
Second and Third Level Pages - for pages below the main section pages in the site hierarchy
Contact Us or Form Page - a page that contains a web form that submits information to the database or an email address.

Other types of page layouts might include:

Blog/News Pages
Discussion Forum Pages
Photo and Image Gallery Pages
Interactive Map Pages
User Account/Profile Pages

And for an online store you will probably also have:

Product Category/Summary/Detail Pages
Shopping Cart/Checkout Pages

Designs for each page layout can be provided to us as either PhotoShop files or HTML pages.

Photoshop

If we are provided with Photoshop files containing the designs then we will create the HTML from them to then build the page templates.

The files should be in layers, with Rollovers as separate layers.

We will be responsible for issues such as accessibility and adherence to standards.

Finished HTML

Some designers have the skills to produced the finished HTML. This obviously will reduce our costs. We will faithfully translate the HTML pages to the finished site.

The Administration Area

The admin area is where the webmaster or site editors will login to make changes to the site. We set up forms for each different page type on the site, providing the abililty to add and edit text, images, videos, or anything else that makes up the content of the site.

We can make simple design changes like adding logos to the admin area to personalise it for each client, but we do not expect the designer to produce designs for this area.

Site structure

We will need to understand the site structure. This will often be clear from the layouts, but a site map in addition is often useful.

Content

When we set the site up we will create a range of pages and populate them with content. Our quotations do not normally include finalising the content on the web site. If you need us to do this please ask us to include this in the budget.

We encourage the customer to add the content because this is a good opportunity for them to learn how to use the system before the site goes live.

Testing

We will hand over the site for acceptance testing. For simple content managed sites this is pretty straightforward. For e-commerce sites we can provide a test script.

This stage is important because we want the end-user to feel confident that the system they are taking over is working as per the original brief. There can be mis-understandings in the best circumstances and these need to be identified and resolved before the site goes live.