(Version 1.5)
One of my most frequently asked questions is:
How Much Does a Website Cost?
and it's a great and worthy question. The answer depends on who you ask, and what you do. You won't find many developers worth their salt that will say right then and there. "$X.XX" If you do get a quote it's likely the process hasn't been properly thought out.
Quite frankly it's easy to "create" a "webpage" today. Anyone can do it with a few minutes of research and an open mind. In this article we will discuss the difference between the "do-it-yourself" companies that you pay $9.99 a month, and the "use-it-yourself" companies like MR. Digital where you pay hundreds and thousands of your hard earned money up front. I've written this article not just for my company, but for web designers and developers and friends who have to answer this question across the world wide web! Please note that this is the first version of this article. Each day there are new technologies that we apply and for that reason, I'm keeping revisions as we go!
Ok, so what is a website?
(Quick definition: A traditional website is a file on your computer or hosted server, the browser asks for the file and displays it on the clients computer. Many modern websites are applications that run on your computer or hosted server. The browser asks the application for information and it's delivered to the client in the form of a file. This allows for interactivity!)
I want my customers, my friends and readers all, to understand how this works, because it's essential in managing the future business or community. So let's start at the beginning and come back to that one.
How does the internet work?
If you look at the internet like you do the power lines it makes a little more sense. In order to get anything electric to turn on you have to plug it in. The power outlet isn't the source of power, but it connects your device to a fuse box, which then connects to a neighborhood box, which connects to the city and then finally the source or supply. Now imagine for a second that the devices that you plug in can also send power as well as receive it. So when you're not using the microwave, it could send all its reserve 'stuff' back to the power grid. That's it! That's how the internet works. (A lot of people out there actually wanted to use power outlets as an additional way to access the internet, but that's for another article.) So now if you look at the internet as a grid of devices, each device sending and receiving messages through "hubs" or "fuse-boxes" spread out around the world you can begin to see how a website works.
If all computers talk to each other what is this “server or host” thing I keep hearing about?
Oh no, a term without warning. Hosting! Don't worry it's simple. People who host don't want you to understand what hosting is, because then you'll ask too many questions and burden their system. All computers that are on the internet are servers and hosts. That's right, the computer you are using right now is a server and a host. It's a lot like a restaurant. The Host shows you where to sit, and the server takes your order and brings your meal. In a large restaurant, or website, like Amazon.com, There are many hosts, many servers, and many other people contributing like wine specialists and dishwashers.
Your computer is the small family restaurant, where the owner is short staffed and acts as the host, server and chef. Your computer can do all of the functions of the big-time websites, but can only serve food to a couple people at a time, if your computer, and its little restaurant and staff seat to many people, service would be bad and no one would come back.
So, I'm beginning to see, a website can be created anywhere, but it needs to be on a super computer to be effective?
Not everyone will need the super computer, but everyone will have someone want to sell them a super computer... The reason it is hard to price out a website for small to medium sized businesses is that the owner (probably you, right, up late researching while the world sleeps) often doesn't know what his actual needs are. Many people who do development don't either. There are a bunch of "Script Kiddies" (That's an internet term for kids who just put stuff together until they have a product) who see that you can build a website in minutes, and charge someone for an hour of work. They don't research the load on the server (computer) they are using to keep the website on, nor do they have long term plans for the maintenance of that computer. There are many different ways to scale up or down a server to fit the needs of the client, and it's all part of the final and ongoing costs.
So do you need a super computer in a bunker with super high speed internet for your site to live on? Or can you manage with the server that is in your office? If you don’t know, make sure you ask someone who does. *Wink *wink ;)
So ok, what if I can create a website for $9.99 and they promise 100% uptime, and a super computer, and all that. It's that worth it?
At this point when my clients ask this question they already know there's something not right about anyone who is offering a website at those rates. Just like a SEO company, web hosts can be some of the shadiest people on the internet. Believe me I’ve tried many hosts over the last 14 years and have had to cancel credit cards because of their “standard” billing practices. (Please E-Mail me before signing up with any host on the internet!)
Let’s use the restaurant example to explain a little more about hosting. If you have the biggest restaurant in the world, and it seats 20,000 people in comfort. Then you charge low rates and 30,000 people come. How much service can you give? There will be people waiting in line for cheap substance. Not good.
Another big part of that system is what you are allowed to do on the host. Many times they will only give you the ability to connect website and host static files. Like giving someone a floppy disk with a couple word documents on it that explain your business. Like having a restaurant that only serves side dishes.
Once you have the server and the host, you need the design, and the content. Great design and content on a bad host turns into all sorts of trouble. If your host gets bogged down, and no one can see your page, what good was the $1,000's you put into design and content?
Lastly, do not let your host own your domain name! If they end up being a bad host, or are sold to a company with less than ethical standards, they can turn your domain name into a page full of spam, or worse, porn! It's happened a thousand times, I've personally taken down and negotiated the domains of a dozen companies whose domains had been violated with links to spam and porn.
True Story:
One company charged $5.99 a month, and after a client spent hundreds having a neighborhood kid update the site, the host put a banner ad on the top of their page, going to all sorts of shady places. When my client wanted the banner off, the company suddenly revealed to them the stipulation in the agreement, you know the one we don't read, and wanted an additional $50 per month. We were able to get the domain transferred to one of my servers, but had to pay an extra couple hundred dollars to free the domain from their clutches.
Ok, so a domain is the website's name, or is the domain the server's name?
Now remember each computer is on the internet talking to one another right? Right. So picture a room full of people and everyone yelling, it doesn't work for much of a conversation. So to solve this problem in the internet world each computer is given a specific address. Just like your address at home. In the computer/internet world this is called an IP address.
An IP address is a number, a hard to remember series of numbers. Computers remember it quite easily, but humans don't. How many phone numbers do you have memorized now that you have a cell phone? Your contacts in that cell phone are the domain names of the internet. Check out my name, James Meyer, in a cell phone that name would point to 330-835-4035. On the internet jamesmeyer.info points to a word press blog that I sometimes run out of my basement at home. Again, just a regular computer, that I use for teaching people how to build a server from home. (If you don't see anything when you go to jamesmeyer.info, it means the computer at home was turned off by my wife, or the cleaning lady, or a power outage or whatever, which is another reason it's good to have a dedicated host and server.) Here at this site MRDIGITAL.COM is the domain. It's also what is called the “Top Level Domain.” A top level domain is just like the first line of your address.
66 S.Miller RD. is the top level domain.
Then there are subdomains, or the 2nd line of your address.
"Suite L2" would be a sub-domain. Popular subdomains are gmail.google.com mail.yahoo.com m.facebook.com.
Each domain can have unlimited sub-domains unless the server or host wants to charge you for them.
To summarize using MRdigital.com as an example.
- mrdigital.com is the top level domain
- projects.mrdigital.com is a subdomain that hosts my project management software.
- Each of these domains point to the address: 64.6.231.109
- The server gets the request at that address and shows the page we tell it to show.
Ok, so I have an idea what a server, host, domain, and website are, now what does it cost?
We’re getting closer, but we aren't quite there yet. Now that we've identified the initial qualifications we have to define what comes next. We at MR DIGITAL prefer to build Content Management Systems using the DRUPAL platform. Whoa, I know, that was a hard sentence to swallow. Let's back up.
People view websites through browsers, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari are just a few that people use to see your site. If you just place a group of files on the server you have to constantly change the files to stay up to date, just like if you were to hand a disk someone, unless you added or changed the files on the disk, the person you gave it to may not see them. Remember you could serve a website on your home computer, and just hit save, then people will see the file in real time when they connect. Because we are using a dedicated server, we have to upload each page. Or so was the way of the internet before Content Management Systems.
Websites meet the database.
Your inventory, or your financial information for your business is all in databases. The reasons for this is that you can use the data in many different ways, you can sort it, and show it in reports, organize it to make things clear and easy to understand. Why would you want your website to be any different?
What we do at MR DIGITAL is take you new or existing website data and plug it into a great database that is hosted on a server. Then we use interactive software to take that data and display it in the form of webpages to your clients and future customers. We do this using open source software, which means that you don't have to surrender your website to foreign developers.
I've heard of open source, what does that mean?
I mentioned surrendering your website to foreign developers. When you sign up with a 3rd party website provider, even really good ones, you are stuck using their software. They may offer a suite of tools that allow you to update your website from anywhere using the database model we just spoke of. However they own the software that you are using to build and present your website. A new slew of horror stories just came to mind. Once you've invested hours and dollars in someone's software you may have a great looking product, but what happens when the company changes hands, or quits supporting the software you were using. It happens so much these days, developers move on, change companies, and suddenly there's no support for the platform you used. Suddenly you have to pay a specialist to update the site and they cost even more than a standard HTML developer.
True Story:
A company wanted to change a link on a flash banner on their homepage on a website they bought for a monthly fee. The original flash banner came free with the initial setup. Then a year later, that company wanted $500 just to open the flash file to change a banner. $500!!! The client felt that was outrageous and came to me. I informed them that it would be better to just move to Java instead of Flash, and when they contacted that host, the company told the client that the Java they wanted was not supported in their platform. Could they update it? Nope. Their solution was to buy a new and supported software platform for a wealth of great features! All for an additional $200 a month! Over a year that would be $2,400, and with that track record, there could be another new platform needed next year! Over two years it could well add up to over $5000. So how did we solve the problem?
Open Source!
Open source means that the software is written by a community of developers like me, and many of our contributions and updates are given for free to the community. With open source, no one controls your website except you and the people you choose to work on it. In the restaurant example not using open source would be like hiring a cook that comes with a grill only he can use. Sure you can inform him of the dishes you want, but if his grill is full, or you want a cake instead of a burger, it simply can't be done. Open source gives you a full range and allows you to hire many different cooks to do many different things, with many of the chefs working at no cost to you!
...and Mr. Digital can build our kitchen, I mean, open source web solution?
Indeed! We build the open source platform so that your website can grow with your company and needs. We can start with a solution that allows you to update your site from anywhere, just like it's a Microsoft Word document or GMAIL / Yahoo Mail application. Then when you and your staff gets familiar with that, we can add E-Commerce, link your website with Facebook, Blogs, multi-media, there isn't a limit as long as you start with the right Open Source Content Management System.
Ok, Open Source sounds great, are there more than one?
You may have heard of the many Open Source Content Management Systems; Drupal, Wordpress, and Joomla are the three big names. Joomla is a very good Content Management System that looks great out of the box, Wordpress is a Blog style system that is used as a blogging standard. Drupal is hands down the most flexible, scalable, content management system to date.
While we are able to develop your website on any open source or proprietary solution, over the years we've learned that there really isn't a better solution out there. Drupal allows full customization and when I say scalable, I mean scalable! Whitehouse.gov, BestBuy, The Onion, and many other large news organization and multi-media sites like twit.tv, all use Drupal because it can always grow and be updated as time goes on to do anything you can dream!
True Story:
A client had an inventory they wanted to show online. Using Drupal we were able to create a very easy way for a client to upload pictures from their camera, add a summary, and check off the attributes. Then let the Drupal do the rest. Drupal takes the pictures, changes their sizes, adds them to the database, creates a slideshow of the images, creates a page, adds it to the site, and submits the new page to all major search engines! In their previous situation they would have had to pay a HTML programmer $200 per hour to create that page! They save literally hundreds of dollars with each item!
Awesome, So what is the going rate for a website?
At this point it would be great to just throw out a number, but as you can see from the above examples there are so many different options and configurations of an open source content management solution. We carefully examine your needs and the current trends in your industry to determine the configuration that is the perfect fit for your company. We also train your staff on the magic of Search Engine Optimization and how to use the site once it's build. We provide interactive training videos, so that you can train present and future staff to make the most of your new website. The web is becoming so important that if you are not already doing daily updates and social network participation you will soon be far behind. These days it doesn't stop at the website; we also factor in things such as HD audio and video and how to integrate it in all of the social avenues. Our goal is to make your website and multi-media the new standard in your industry!
When you choose Mr. Digital, no matter your budget, we will find a way to have your company fully integrated in the digital world.
If you’re looking for a website, or you are a developer and want to partner up or learn more about the Drupal CMS contact me at any time, I’m likely awake slurping mountain dew at the keyboard!
-James Meyer
Director of Digital Services
P.S. Please check back frequently as I try to update this page as new and interesting options and scenarios arise!