Just kidding. Web design, web development and web maintenance go hand in hand. What ever company or person you chose (pick me! pick me!) to manage your web presence should be upfront with what these terms are and how much its going to cost you. So we’re going to break it down piece by piece for you and lay out an average cost with expectations.
Web Design
Web design is the skill of creating presentations of content that is delivered to an end-user through the World Wide Web, by way of a Web browser or other Web-enabled software. Just like an artist many different tools exist to complete this part and costs vary from free to thousands of dollars. Small business types may want to budget around $300 on the low end to $800 or more on the high end. The final cost is dependent on amounts of revisions you want and how custom you need things. If you already have a logo, a color scheme in mind and don’t need too many custom bells and whistles you can aim for the low end.
Now that you have your web presence. Wait. Why do I keep saying web presence? Well, a web page is a web page but you can call it different things. Here is a quick list and definitions:
Web pages. This is a few pages that have a similar design with information presented on different pages, changes occur infrequently. You can think of this as an online business card or flier.
Blogs. A blog is almost exactly like a web page except information is added frequently. See my web presence for an example. I have static pages and pages that get updated more often. Yes the best of both worlds.
Web presence. I use this term to cover all the places your brand may be viewed on.
CMS. Content management systems sound very complex but are quite the opposite. This site is built with one very popular and flexible CMS called WordPress. Another example of a CMS is your Yahoo mailbox, so if you can manage your email some how you can manage a CMS for your web presence.
Web Maintenance
Your web presence is designed now the whole world can find you, right? Wrong. All the cool stuff you have designed needs to be stored on the internet and it needs an address. The files made need to be stored or hosted on the web. That is why its called web hosting. Those pretty little files you made can be hosted anywhere in the world across multiple servers all you need is an address to find them. The address or URL can be almost anything, its yourname.com.
So how much does the URL or domain name cost along with the web hosting. 9 time out of 10 you get the domain name with your web hosting and expect to pay from about $130 to $200 a year for both. The more successful your presence is the more its going to cost you. By success I mean thousands and thousands of pages views per month. I like to start you off on the low end and add more if you need it.
As you can see the internet can be an affordable way to advertise or connect with people all over the world or as close to you as your own town. Just make sure you know what you are buying before you lay down the cash! Contact me for a quote or questions.
Just like ghost writing, ghost blogging has become a hot topic because…
It’s good/It’s bad
Ghost blogging is something every one has heard about and you probably think it is good, or bad. No matter who you ask, eventually the word ethical will come up. Extremely valid opinions are discussed and dissected. Ghost blogging if used correctly will be good, not violate any ones ethics and leave your web page with fresh content.
Fresh content equals: a reason to tweet, a reason to reach out to your Facebook fans, and reason to click over to your web page.
It’s not if and only if
How would ghost blogging be unethical? If you have a blog or a webpage for “The ABC123 Company” and have someone else create the content for producing sales leads, business contacts and search results. That’s ok.
Ghost blogging is unethical if you portray your web page or blog as written by a specific person and it was not. That is something Menchaca Media will kindly let you know is not something we currently offer. The best thing to do is clearly state who wrote it. It’s the difference between a personal blog and a corporate blog. Hopefully this clears up any confusion and answers your questions. If you have a need for this service please contact me at the usual contacts or with the form below.
I have been ghost blogging for a webmaster who is too busy to do it himself.
This is how it goes:
He sends me a topic and how long he wants the post to be. Typically it is 500-700 words long
We agree on a time frame and a price.
I research the keywords and the subject before I start writing. This is important because the keyword is what will help your web page rank higher. Some times I have a keyword given to me, I still look up other keywords to use. Stuffing a page full of the same keywords does not help and it makes the post sound retarded.
WordPress was updated to version 3.0 and so far so good. The video tour below is from the WordPress guys and if your site has been upgraded take a look at this video as it will answer many of your questions. If you are not sure your web page has been updated send me a message and I will let you know. Some of my clients do not have a content management system, take a look at this video anyway you may find you like this type of web page instead of a static page.
Event Horizon or Horizonte de Acontecimiento since it needs to be in Spanish has been in my personal collection for less than a year and I like it. I usually don’t like my pieces very much but this is the one exception. Heavy on the religious iconography and symbolism. Critique after the break.
The owners of Silva’s Little Tacos located in the Valverde Flea Market on Valverde rd and Business 83 in Donna, Texas discovered an old business card in a photo album and they wanted to have it redone. After approaching a few printers in the Valley with no one wanting to take the time to recreate this piece of Taco history, Silva’s Little Taco approached me. Here is what they had:
So my decision was to redraw the character (now Tacoman is ready for a shirt, stickers, menus or anything else!) freehand of course and then scan that image. I added some tacos for his platter but I stayed true to the original design. See the finished card below and yes I did have an order of tacos. They were excellent! Thank you Silva’s Little Tacos for your business and the tacos! Go by and try them for your self you will not be disappointed! I will update you with the phone number soon.
