April 15, 2009 by Denny Luce.

Almost a year ago to the day I stopped working on the Shepherd of the Valley Lutheran Church website (http://www.sov-id.org).  This was the first church website I really took to the next level with a complete design and content overhaul to bring it into the 21st Century.  I was proud of this site and put hundreds of hours into it.  I won’t bore you with details in this post, but maybe in a future post I will outline the cool features and content it contained (yes, the past tense).

For the last year absolutely no updates were made to the site.  Instead, the staff of the church decided to create a Wordpress Blog  to keep the congregation updated on church events and news.  The two sites ran in tandem until March 2009, when the new webmaster decided to forward traffic from the domain name hosting the original site to the Wordpress Blog address.  Taking this course of action is wrong in so many ways, but I am here to explain how much damage it will cause to search engine generated traffic to the church’s web ministry outreach.

In late 2007 I went on a crusade to bring more traffic to the Shepherd of the Valley (SOV) website.  I researched SEO and began putting the pieces together to increase traffic to the site.  I was successful in getting the site homepage #1 in results for several critical keywords and keyword phrases in Google, Yahoo! and MSN Live search engines.  When I stopped updating the website in April 2008, we had an average of 1154 visits per month (72% were new visits and 61% driven from search engines), 2206 pageviews averaging 2.14 pages per visit and averaging 648 visitors (averages from the previous 6 months of data).  When I started the SEO process I had 21 pages indexed by Google.  When I left the site I had 411 pages indexed in Google (photo gallery pages made up 3/4 of them).  I was updating the site weekly with audio broadcasts of the services and sermons, as well as photos and content.  The search engines loved the changing and updated content.

I had set up the ground work that kept the traffic rolling into the site even a year later without an update that entire time.  The numbers were still high in February 2009 with an average of 879 visits per month (49% new visits and 78% driven from search engines), 1711 pageviews averaging 1.95 pages per visit and averaging 454 visitors (averages from the previous 6 months of data).

Now that the domain name points to a Wordpress Blog address, the SEO is worthless.  Sure, the results are still there for now, but the visitors will end up on a page that does not relate to their search.  The original pages that do load are not formatted correctly because the page can’t find the CSS file at the redirected domain address.

The moral of the whole story…ask someone with SEO and website management knowledge before making changes to a site that could destroy the SEO in place.

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April 22, 2008 by Denny Luce.

There are quite a few options out there for hosting your organization’s web site. The features and cost can range greatly between services…so how do you choose a service that is right for you? I want to educate you on the key features a typical non-profit organization needs to have for the average web site and provide a link to a hosting service that can meet all these needs at a reasonable cost.

Key Features to Look for in a Hosting Service

There are many hosting services out there waiting to sign you up for their website hosting service. Here are several key points to consider when choosing a hosting service provider:

• Storage Space – The amount of server space provided to store files. Determine the types of files you plan on hosting to your website visitors. If you plan on providing audio and/or video files, you may need larger storage requirements.
• Bandwidth – The amount of data transfer allowed to and from your site. If you will be linking to other sites that may increase traffic to your site, consider a higher bandwidth plan. Exceeding the monthly bandwidth limits can add expensive additional charges.
• Reliability – Make sure the server uptime is guaranteed at least 99.9% (equivalent to <9 hours downtime per year).
• Email – Make sure the service provides enough email accounts for your needs. Some services provide enough email accounts for your entire organization or congregation.
• Domain Name Registration – Does the service provide free domain name registration? How many do you need? Domain name registration costs from $5-$25 per year, so consider this in your cost analysis of different plans and service providers.
• Subdomains – Does the host service provide free subdomain registration? How many do you need? A subdomain is a “subsection” of your domain that behaves as its own domain space. Used for providing server space for a separate website within a single domain name. For example, your church operates a preschool and you want it to have a separate website, but don’t want to pay extra for the hosting. A subdomain can be created to host all the preschool website files as to not conflict with the church site. A subdomain address looks like this: http://preschool.hlc-boise.org. Subdomains are often used for blogs, youth sites, photo galleries and other ministries supported by the church/organization.
• Additional Application Support – Do you need SQL database, PHP scripting or CGI application support? Not all service plans include these features. Make sure the plan has the features you might want to incorporate in the future.
• Linux or Windows – For the most part I prefer using Linux servers. Linux servers are typically more robust and reliable in a web server environment. If you plan on using .ASP or .NET applications then you will want to use a Windows based web server.
• Cost – I didn’t list cost first because you will find many services with similar fees. It is important for the service you choose to have the flexibility and features required for the best price. Also consider the service plan levels available in case a future upgrade is necessary. Make sure you are able to upgrade/downgrade service levels easily.

Recommendation
Recommending a hosting service is not something I take lightly, especially when it comes to a decision as important as web hosting. I personally use and recommend 1&1 Hosting to meet all your hosting needs. For over five years I have used 1&1 Hosting for personal and business sites and have had great success. They have excellent reliability (99.99% uptime guarantee), free 24/7 phone support service, a variety of service plans, great features and affordable pricing.

The lowest cost package includes one free domain name registration (automatically renewed for free each year), 10 GB server space, 300 GB bandwidth, 600 email accounts, 25 subdomains, 100 MB MySQL database use (up to 10 databases), PHP4&5 scripting support, a single Blog and no setup fees for a very affordable $3.99 per month, or $47.88 per year.

For only $1 more a month, add an additional domain name, increase to 120 GB of server space, 1,200 GB bandwidth and many more included features. Outstanding service and features you just can’t beat at a great price! Visit http://www.digital-outreach-web-design.com and click on the link to 1&1 Hosting in the lower left column of the page to find out more about 1&1 Hosting service packages.

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October 6, 2006 by Denny Luce.

I want to discuss various issues involved in starting a small Christian web design business. Its one thing to volunteer your time to helping others develop a site, but often the working environment is informal and things are a little fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants style. In all of my projects I have always had a basic project plan and a mental picture of how I want the site to be designed. This is great for such informal projects, but when you have to develop in a more professional environment, you must have a formal plan in place. This is where it gets a little tricky. Here are a few of the items I have found tricky to produce…

Mission & Vision of Company
It is important to define the scope of your business and the purpose for pursuing business opportunities. As a Christian web design company, I have a Vision of helping Christian ministries outreach and evangelize to other believers and to non-believers alike. The Internet provides an opportunity of reaching millions of people. A web presence is a great way to reach many people who might not come to your ministry otherwise.

Develop a Business Plan
Once you understand the purpose of your company, you need to write up a formal business plan that outlines various aspects of running your business. This plan does not have to be elaborate or cover every little detail out the door, but it does have to cover the basics.

Some of these basics include:

• Company summary - what is the company, who owns the company, what is the scope, mission and vision, how is it structured, where will it be located
• Services provided - a breakdown of clientele or who your target audience will be, types of services offered, etc
• Market analysis - a competitive comparison to identify a need for your services and a target audience
• Marketing strategy - how you plan on getting into the market and finding new clients, a plan for promoting your services, a pricing strategy
• Financial plan - how are you going to finance startup costs, what are the costs involved in operating your business and how will you cover these costs until the business becomes profitable, what is the projected target for revenue during the first few years

Most of this information can be gathered over the Internet and by doing a business search through your local city, county and state agencies.

Organizing All the Details
It is one thing to know how to do something; it’s a whole other thing to know to do it smooth and efficiently. When running a formal business, you have to keep things running in a logical order. The client most likely has no idea what it takes to develop a good website. As Internet users we often take website design for granted, but what happens when you come across a site that doesn’t display properly; has missing photos and images; takes forever to load; has the same content as every other site or no content at all? You click your browsers back button and find a better site.

It takes a lot of work to make a design that works, and it can’t be done without passing along a lot of guidance to the client. So it makes a lot of sense to put your development process into a document for the client to follow along.

This document will most likely be a “living” document that constantly gets updated the more you work with it. It needs to cover all the basics from start to finish of the website, and even the maintenance and warranty details after the site is live.

Here are the items I cover (so far) in my “Getting Started Guide”:

• Discuss domain name selection
• Discuss how to select a hosting service
• Discuss different hosting service features
• Discuss the website development process
• Discuss how to collect content and organize it into categories
• Discuss the various page layouts, navigation menu options, color schemes, font types, graphic and image types
• Discuss added or extra options such as Blogs, email setup and freeware/box software they may want to acquire.

These are just a few items that will come up throughout the design process and having a majority of it documented will make the project flow smoother.

Contract Development
This was very difficult and can be expensive if you choose to have it done by a lawyer. There are a few decent web development service contracts on the Web that can be customized to your personal business needs. This is the path I followed. I am still working out the kinks of my Website Design Contract. You will need to have separate contracts for the different types of services you offer. I am planning on having three contracts total; the main Website Design Contract, a Long-Term Maintenance Service Contract and a Short-Term/Job Specific Maintenance Contract.

In Closing
This is only a snapshot of the hurdles you have to jump through when starting a small web design business. I will continue to post commentary on this blog discussing other aspects of running a home-grown small business. Thank you for visiting and God Bless.

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September 16, 2006 by Denny Luce.

This is the first post of the business blog for Digital Outreach Web Design, a Christian web design company with the tagline of “Helping your ministry OUTREACH to the World.” Digital Outreach Web Design is owned and operated by Denny Luce and is considered to be a ministry for ministries, offering low-cost and/or free web design services to Churches and non-profit organizations.

The company is in it’s infancy and is slowly building. My focus is to offer as much free design service to organizations in need, while supplementing business costs with sustaining and maintenance work on these developed sites.

A majority of web design companies charge a hefty fee for their services, and this leaves a lot of smaller ministries unable to get their message out to the masses. I want to try and remove the costs associated in designing the initial site, and offer a free site design with the chance of being hired to maintain the site for a small quarterly fee.

In future posts I will continue to discuss the mission and vision of Digital Outreach Web Design, as well as highlight and promote ministries I enter into buisness with. So please visit often.

Denny Luce

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