Do I want to do this again in six months?
If you agree that a good answer is “no” then you might want to consider letting ClickNathan build your site. “Why?” is a great follow up question, and I’ll tell you.
I build sites that are the latest and greatest, using technologies and methods that will keep your site fresh, technologies like:
- HTML5. This is the basic meat and potatoes of your site. If HTML was the state-of-the-art mobile home in 1994, semantically written, clean and sleek HTML5 is the futuristic mansion of today. It’s the difference between your site losing value the minute it comes off of the lot or preparing for everything the Web has (and will have) to offer.
- CSS. Cascading Style Sheets separate your site’s design from its code. It allows your site’s look to easily be updated when you want it to be, and work across all of the major browsers (including mobile!). Plus, with CSS, you can have one website that not only works across multiple devices (ie, laptops, tablets and mobile phones), but looks and reacts differently to suit each of those types of devices needs. Again, future-proofing.
- PHP. This is an open-source programming language that gives your site all of the cool features that users expect from websites, without all of the costly overhead.
- Javascript. If your site were a car, and PHP were the engine toiling away to keep you going, Javascript is the dashboard. It’s the headlights, the radio, and all of the other stuff that takes a website from just being a page of information and transforms it into a truly enjoyable experience. If you hear someone talking about jQuery, that’s just more or less a way to write Javascript that’s a little easier for the average developer.
- WordPress. Content Management Systems (ie, a way for you to login to your site to update content) come and go, and of the dozens that were created in the 2000s, WordPress shines above them all. Every one of my sites is backed by WP. Best of all, it’s open-source and free, so no monthly fees, and since it’s the most popular CMS out there, powering somewhere around a third of the web, it’s most certainly not going anywhere.
- Schema.org, OpenGraph, the list goes on. There are tons of “little” technologies that big players like Google & Facebook work on to make the web better. When they’re going to catch on, they get implemented in my clients’ sites.
Flash. While, in many ways, Flash is still ahead of its time (for one, search engines and Flash don’t play together all that well), using the technology sparingly and appropriately can give your visitors the TV experience they know and love, while keeping you closer to the Google logo.Flash is no longer “ahead of it’s time”. Flash is now a dinosaur.