Nicole Hill Website Development

Having the content, at least in rough form, will be crucial to properly planning the website layout and design.  Put some serious thought into what you want your website to convey. What feelings should your visitors get when they visit your site? If you are a restaurant, do you want to just show your menu or do you want website visitors to feel like your restaurant is a gathering place? 

What is website hosting and why does it cost money? If you can imagine your website as a collection of files and data which are served to a user to view whenever they hit your domain (ie. www.your-website.com). Those files must be hosted (saved) on a server which is accessible to the internet. Hosting companies (there are thousands of these out there) specialize in just this – keeping your files and data safe, and having the ability to serve them to the user, in the form of a website, when the user asks for them. Many of these will also store backups of your website (in case anything went wrong with the correct version), and they have measures in place to ensure your website will always be available online (if they have outages, they typcially have redundant servers in other parts of the world to ensure websites don’t go down).

What will this hosting cost? Typically it will be in the $150-250 per year range.

How to register? Once the planning phase of the website is complete, getting a hosting account will enable the build to begin. I can work with any hosting company and have my preferred suggestions if you’ve never done this before! If you need assistance signing up with a host, I am very happy to help with this by sending links, videos or evening being available via online meeting or in person beside you as we walk through the process.

What is the Domain Name? The domain name is what someone would type in the browser to find your website. For example, my domain name is WebsitesWithNicole.com. The registration of this name (or names if you want multiple links to point to your website), ensures that only you get to “point” that name to your website. 

What domain should we pick? Anything you like as long as its available! There are several websites out there to help you find an available domain name, I typically just go to Godaddy.com/domains and use their domain search feature. I like that one because if your first choice is not available, it will give you alternative options to choose from.

How much does it cost? Each domain has a different price, depending on how popular it is percieved to be. Most will be somewhere in the range of $10-40 per year.

How to register? If you’ve never registered a domain before, it can be pretty overwhelming, although I can assure you it is not a huge process. I am here to help! I will send you links, videos or be on a call or in person if that is what you require. 

The website will be built in full, based on confirmed architecture. This step also includes initial quality assurance/quality control by Nicole to ensure all pages function and look proper on all devices.

This is the longest part of the process and can take from 2-8 weeks depending on what the website is that we are building.

You will have ample opportunity to preview and test your own website before it is launched. This is where we can perfrom minor tweaks and fixes.

The website will be built on a temporary domain, in a manner that will not allow search engines or other people to find it or preview it before we are ready! 

At launch time, I will connect your domain to your website hosting. This connection can sometimes take several hours or a couple of days to fully propagate across the internet – so please keep in mind if you need to be launched for public by a specific date, we will want to link the domain to the hosting several days before your deadline. 

Although I am always willing and available to perform maintenance and updates to your website, I will always offer my clients the ability to manage their own website content. Training on how to manage your content is always included with me. 

Your hosting and domain name will be additional costs if you do not already have those – please see the details in the How It Works section for estimates on those.

• Future work will be quoted upon request, current hourly rate is $80/hour (note: hourly rate may change over time at Nicole’s discretion).
• Regular maintenance plan – billed at the hourly rate as performed/required. Typically requires approx. ¼- ¾ hours ($20-$60) average per month.

WordPress as a platform has been around for over 20 years! It started out as just a blog platform but has grown in the last 8 years or so to be quite a robust platform for hosting websites. WordPress hosts over 43% of all websites worldwide!  It has loads of flexibility and makes managing the website easy for anyone.

Getting WordPress installed on your web server is not always straightforward – let me help you get set up!

Whether you want a simple website or a complex store with custom fucntionality, I can build to suit your needs. 

After I build your website, I will take the time to train you to use it. I make customized videos for you so you’ll never be stuck wondering how to edit your own website.