One issue everyone who has a website needs to deal with is hosting. At Learn Method, since we are strictly a website design and development agency so we don’t do any website hosting. The advantage of situation is that it puts us in a very unbiased role to recommend a hosting solution.

As I often tell clients, this is a not-too-common but very good situation where our interests are exactly the same. It’s in my best interest to help you find reliable hosting for the lowest possible price. The reasoning is simple.

If I direct a client to a hosting solution with frequent problem the one usually getting the calls is the web developer. This is followed up by us contacting the hosting company to resolve the issue and usually having to spend time to prove it’s a hosting issue and not a coding one. This is wasted time as nothing is gained by us or the client. Therefore, it’s in our best interests to find a website hosting provider that will provide the most stable easy to manage solution.

When your site goes down, and be prepared that at some point it will go down since no computer is immune to issues, you want a hosting solution which can quickly deal with any issue at any time. Remember that computer problems usually occur at the least convenient times.

Our recommendation is usually very simple and addresses a single question first asked by many clients.

We have an IT person and a net work so can’t we just host the site internally at our office?

My recommendation on this decision is the same 100% of the time—use a professional hosting company.

Over the past 10-15 years prices have come down so low that it’s virtually impossible to duplicate the level of service internally that you will receive with a hosting company for the same cost. Any decent hosting company will have redundant connections to the internet, backup power, daily backups, and 24×7 tech support on the premise to offer support when needed. This cannot possibly be matched for the price offered by most companies today.

Try hosting internally and you might feel like you are saving a few dollars, but what happens when your server goes down at midnight on Friday? This recently happened to a client who hosts internally and the site was down until the IT department returned to work on Monday to fix the problem.

Once the decision has been made to use a professional hosting company, we make recommendations based on the specifics of the project. Issues such as server platform needed, project size and expected volume are just some of the criteria looked at before recommending a specific provider.

One of the interesting aspects of the web development field is the wide variety of people and companies a developer gets to work with. Over the past dozen or so years, I have worked with everyone from individuals starting up a new venture, small (but established) businesses, to large companies (some of the fortune 500 status). Since our website development projects have spanned a wide variety of industries, the trends I have detected are more on a general business nature vs industry specific. The most important trend to learn and share with new customers is the recipe for website success.

While there is no one size fits all with respect to a website’s success, there is one trend I have noticed over the years that all of my most successful clients have in common. Believe it or not, it has nothing to do with the web development company or anything they do. It has to do with who they have, or better yet, who they don’t have internal to their organization.

A vendor, such as a web developer, is an expert in their industry of web development. They are not an expert in selling, fixing or servicing widgets, the xyz trade association or whatever the current client’s business happens to be. Even if the web development vendor has extensive experience in your industry, they most likely are not an expert in your specific organization. This is why it’s imperative to have a person tasked with the responsibility of the website within your organization. This person should be responsible for gathering and organization all relevant information from the various departments of your organization and then passing it to the developer. They don’t need to be technical but do need to understand the technicality of how your business works, especially if your website will be executing specific business tasks. The developer then has a single contact to work with to confirm all business logic and get other necessary information.

Even though one person might not know the inner workings of each department, having a dedicated internal resource in a valuable asset. With this structure in place, there is an internal person putting pressure on the various departments to provide the necessary information. Time and time again, when working on a large project and the client has not tasks someone with this responsibility, the project often lacks both ownership and the spark internal to the organization necessary for its success.

For any large web development project to succeed in the long run means it must become a living and breathing tool within the company. This requires constant maintenance and unless someone has been tasks with this as a major part of their job it seems to get overlooked more often than not.

All websites, with the exception of very simple static sties, utilize at least one programming language in addition to HTML for website development. Any site with ecommerce, online registration, CMS, or even simple database integration will need to use some type of programming language in addition to HTML. Some of the more common web development technologies are .NET, PHP, Classic ASP, Cold Fusion, J2EE, PERL etc. However the real question is, which one is best? If you ask this question to three different developers you are likely to get three different answers. Generally the one they develop in is professed to be the best followed up by a lecture on a list of flaws with all the other technologies.

I prefer to take a little different approach to this topic. I believe with the hundreds of projects I have been involved in, most of the time there is no specific technology far superior to the others. I say this only because most projects can easily be accomplished with a talented developer who specializes in any of the above technologies mentioned. This should imply that the developer is much more important than the language they are developing with. It’s similar to how an artist is more important that the type of paint they are using, water colors vs oils. If you are a fan of water colors, you will probably like a oil painting from a great artists more than a water color from an artist without any talent.

However, there are a few things to consider which may show why one option is better than the other in your specific situation. For example, if your website needs to be hosted on an Linux based server then .NET or ASP would not be a good solution since these require windows servers. If budget is a concern then cold fusion may not be a good choice as it needs cold fusion server software which can run up to $7500.

One of the most critical factors to consider on a larger application which will be in service for many years is additional development for support and upgrades. I have had several calls over the years from companies looking for another development company to take over their existing project. Many times we had to turn them down because we don’t specialize in the technology required. Some of these callers were contemplating redeveloping their sites as they could not find any local development companies with the necessary skill sets able to take over their project. With a little upfront research, problems like this can be avoided.

My suggestion is to find a development company that specializes in more than one technology. They can then look at the requirements of the project and your organizations specific situation and propose the best technology for the job. At Linear Method, we focus most of our development on Microsoft.NET and PHP. These two technologies were chosen not only because they are probably the two most widely used technologies today, but they cover the two most common platforms. .NET is the most common programming technology for Windows and PHP is the most common web technology for Linux. Along with these two technologies, the databases used are Microsoft SQL Server and MySQL which are the two most widely used databases for web development.

These technologies will leave the client with options once the project is complete. In addition, since .NET and PHP are very common web development technologies, existing code modules can be leveraged for most projects saving both time and money during development.

With all this being said, if you have a developer you trust and a fairly simple site that won’t need ongoing maintenance and have the flexibility to host on any server environment then just about any technology should be sufficient.

One of the most common questions I get is “how  much is a website?”.  It’s probably because most people have never been involved in developing a website and therefore have no idea what’s involved. 

Unfortunately there is no easy answer.  My typical response is that it’s just like buying a car.  You can spend $3000 on a car, used of course, or over $300,000, for a Rolls-Royce.  Websites have just about the same ranges with the exceptions of the very upper echelon of sites that can easily go in the millions of dollars.

Another common follow up question goes something like this… “How much will it be to develop a site that is just like www.somesite.com?”  Unfortunately this is also a question I can rarely answer.  My favorite analogy on this question is that it’s like asking a builder how much would it cost to build a house just like the one at 123 Main St.  However, if all the builder can do is look at the outside he has no idea on any of the following:

How big is the house,  3 bedrooms, 4 or maybe even 5?

Is the basement finished?

Are the floors hardwood, carpet, tile or something else?

What about the kitchen?  Are the counter tops granite?

This list can go on and on. 

Web applications are very similar.  We have created several sites which function more as web based applications where the public may have access to less than 10% of the site.  An excellent example is 9Health Fair.  This site is open to the public for general information and searching the database of health fair locations.  However, approximately 90% of this site is only accessible to the 9Health Fair staff with some portions available to those managing the individual sites. 

The fair has over 18,000 people who volunteer each year.  These people must be managed and assigned to appropriate sites matching the sites offerings with the skills of each volunteers.  Site coordinators need to go through a very thorough process of setting up their site each year by entering in detailed information on their fair which then must be approved.  The entire process is managed online and completely invisible to the average user.  These are just some of the many functions the website manages.

Assume someone wanted to start a health fair in another state and use the 9Health Fair as a model.  If they asked their developer what it would cost to develop a site like 9Health Fair, any response with even a fairly tight range would be cause for suspect.   It’s impossible to estimate a project when you only have 10% of the information, especially when you are unaware you only have 10% of the information.

The solution is a little old fashion hard work.  It takes some (or multiple) discussions with the developer going through in detail exactly what the site needs to do.  An experienced developer can walk you through this process, continuing to ask additional questions which are based on your responses from previous questions.  Only after this is accomplished and a requirements document written up can the initial question be answered, “How much does a website cost?”