Frequently Asked Questions

1. How Much Does a Website Cost?
My clients typically have a good budget for advertising their website address and want a high quality, custom website to impress their customers.

I do not offer fixed-bid pricing, only time and material pricing. I track my time accurately and individual tasks are reported on invoices. Although projects can vary widely depending on the client's needs, typical websites take 40-100 hours. In my portfolio, the melwhite.org website is an example that took 40 hours. The lgbtforobama.com website took 80 hours. The dansdiscountjewelry.com website took 83 hours (Adding the online employee application, a Flex project, took an additional 16 hours.)

Things that affect how quickly a project can be completed are:

  • Does the client have the raw graphic files ready? Company logo, staff or store photos, etc. I can find stock photography for general images if needed, however that is something that adds time.
  • Does the client already have a good "feel" for what they would like the website to look like (possibly a style similar to an existing website in their business category) or will I need to propose several drafts?
  • Does the website need functionality beyond what comes default with our Backlit Content Management System? The default features are webpage and photo management. Examples of extended website functionality would be internet application development, such as an application for event registration or accepting employment forms.
  • Does the website involve e-commerce? Small inventories can be handled with PayPal or Amazon Payments. Using these services mean the client does not need to setup an internet merchant account with a bank. If the client requires a full online catalog, however, that will add significant time and also the need for an SSL certificate for encrypting credit card information that is sent to the website.

2. How About Flash Banners?
The time it takes to develop Flash banners can vary greatly depending on what is needed. The banner project found on this page included 3 themes with 4 size variations for each theme, for a total of 12 banners. The project took 40 hours.

3. What is Your Hourly Rate?
Please contact me for my current rate - jamie@curiousfind.com or 859-230-5625.

4. Can My Website Have Email Addresses?
Yes. All websites hosted with CuriousFind will have a cPanel control panel where you can setup as many email accounts as you want for your domain. You can access your email via webmail or any email capable device. You can use either the POP3 or IMAP protocol. IMAP allows you to keep your webmail, desktop email, and smartphone email all in sync. It does this by storing your email on the server rather than downloading it and immediately deleting it from the server like POP3 does. You can access the mail server using encrypted SSL if needed. You can also create email forwarders and auto-responders in cPanel.

5. What Are The First Steps in Building a Website?
You will first need a domain name for your website. Domain names can be purchased from a registrar and usually cost about $10 per year. I recommend GoDaddy. You will need website hosting. A host is a computer server that stores your website files and serves them whenever someone enters your domain name into their browser. CuriousFind offers web hosting. If you are creating a new website, this is highly recommended so you can utilize our Backlit Content Management System to easily edit your website and upload photos.

6. Can My Website Have a Blog?
Yes. I can integrate a WordPress blog into your website. WordPress has its own control panel, however, separate from the Backlit Content Management System. You will find that the XStandard editor in the Backlit Content Management System is superior to the WordPress editor. However, you can also use tools to post to your blog, such as Live Writer if you are using a Windows PC or Ecto if you are using a Mac.

7. Does My Company or Organization Need Someone In-house to Maintain Our Website?
It depends on how often you change or add new pages to your website. On one end you have a brochure-type website that rarely changes and simply offers an online presence for a business so potential customers can get information at any time and feel confident that the business is well established. At the other end are large corporations whose websites change frequently and offer a great deal of online functionality. These companies sometimes have an entire web team in-house.

CuriousFind offers the Backlit Content Management System so you can easily edit the pages of your website. You can quickly upload images and pdf documents. Anyone familiar with Microsoft Word or other text editors can use the XStandard editor that comes with the Backlit Content Management System to make basic edits. Having a web person (or just someone with working knowledge of HTML) would certainly expand what you could do with the editor. For more heavy-lifting, I am available at my hourly rate.