Web Sites Overview and the services I provide

Web sites range from simple "wall paper" sites that anyone can produce to very artistic sites with elaborate JavaScript to advanced interactive e-commerce sites. Interactive sites inevitably involve programming in one or more languges. As a programmer this is my area of interest and expertise. There are many web site technology choices, including PHP (Personal Home Page), Microsoft's ".NET" proprietary approach, and Java technologies such as Java Server Pages and Servlets. I have chosen to specialize in the Java technologies because they provide the best combination of low cost, maximum capabilty, multi-vendor support, and the ability to scale up from the simplest low cost site to full distributed enterprise sites handling thousands of users simultaneously.

My philosophy is to develope sites in such a way that you can maintain, update and enhance the site independently. Of course, I am available for any support required if you prefer to delegate those tasks.

How to get your domain and create your own simple site

  1. You can get you own domain for $15 a year by going to Register4Less.com and finding one you like that isn't already taken.
  2. Get any HTML editor such as AceHTML Pro and prepare some pages with text and images. Avoid Microsoft proprietary extensions if you use the Frontpage editor because it restricts you to only Microsoft web server sites.
  3. Sign up with some web site hosting company for $10 or so a month. If you intend to have your site be interactive using Java technologies, then you need a site that hosts Java servlets and the MySQL database like MMAWeb.com for about $25 a month. Many such sites can be found at servlets.com.
  4. The hosting site support staff will give you information you need to load into the regist4less.com site to get your domain set up so all the Domain servers in the world know the actual IP address of your site. It takes about a day for the DNS changes to ripple through before your site is visible.
  5. Use some ftp ( file transfer protocol program ) such as CuteFtpPro for about $50 and transfer your web site .html files up to the hosting site.
If you prefer to delegate the work, I can produce simple sites for about $200.

Advanced Interactive Sites

Just about everything about an interactive site, such as an e-commerce mail order site, involves programming. Modern advanced sites are a mixture of XHTML code, cascading style sheets, server side programming like Java servlets, client side programming in the browser, JavaScript, and maybe even Flash movies, and Java applets. The best way to display and maintain a large number of products is to use a data base and have the product pages generated by a program. The Universal Medical Inc. web site is a good example. For this site the owner keeps his master data in Excel spread sheet files. I developed a custom GUI that reads in the Excel files, converts them to MySQL data base format and fixes various HTML special code problems( like inch and tradmark symbols ). The GUI allows the web site to be easily updated with new products and images.

Many advanced sites use frames or iframes to simplify navigation and to speed up viewing since they don't have to redisplay the navigation for every page. However, frame based sites require programming expertise. Locking the browser padlock and enabling search engines like Google to be able to index the site in the presence of frames are two issues that have been mastered for the Universal Medical site.

For sites that need a special look, I team up with web site look and feel designers who set up the cascading style sheets and sample pages that the program generated pages mimic. For special graphics and logos I team up with a local graphics designer. I do all the programming tasks, from designing the data base to implementing the Java servlets and Java Server Pages to the JavaScript code that is needed on the client side. I also do any custom business glue software, such as data conversion, and prep for an accounting package, to custom GUI's that make maintaining the web site relatively easy.