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During this stage, we determine what your needs are and how best to design a system to meet them. This is typically done either by phone or email, but could include face-to-face meetings. Depending on the time necessary, there may be a charge, but typically the initial consultation can be conducted long-distance and will give you a good idea of where you stand.

Typically, this is where we will decide, in consultation with you, whether you require a custom solution, or if you can achieve your needs more cheaply and effectively with an out-of-the-box solution. We will discuss the options with you, and if you decide to go with the custom solution, we will proceed to the design and creation phases. An out-of-the-box solution may require tweaking, but generally the design and creation phases are abbreviated to a single "tweaking" phase, and from there we proceed directly to testing.

This is also where we will determine how best to meet your front-end needs, either through us or a third party. If you already have a designer for the front-end, we will consult with them during this phase as well.

Information we will determine:

• The purpose behind the site: (e.g. to disseminate product information, to give news on upcoming events, to provide a platform for a business, to display work online).
• The general design of the site: (e.g. a simple main page linking to several detail pages, a log displaying incremental information of some kind, a more complex, tree-based navigation with numerous detail pages, a listing of products with details).
• The amount of updating the site is likely to need: (e.g. a mostly-static site with content areas that remain the same for long periods, a more dynamic site with content areas that remain constant in number but will need to change regularly, a totally dynamic site with the ability to create new content areas).
• Your level of tech comfort: (to determine how best to communicate concepts, for the most part, although it will also come into play in other areas).

During this stage, we will work with you and any outside designers to create a wireframe layout of the site, and determine where content will be inserted and how best to store that content. Additional communication and meetings will keep us in the loop. If there need to be any changes to the design of the site because of various factors, this is the best time to find that out.

We will require access to your web host at this point. We are not experts in web-hosting or domains, so we can only offer limited advice if you have no web-host. Some hosts allow levels of access, and we prefer if there is no way we can access your financial details or make alterations to your plan (for your own security and to keep our liability down). We will discuss the particular information we will need at this point. If your host does not provide services which will be required for the project, we will inform you and help you make a choice based on this information. Typically, our requirements are PHP5, MySQL, and Apache (if you don't know what we're talking about, we'll help) but depending on your specific needs, they may be more (or occasionally less).

During this stage, depending on requirements determined, we will either alter existing code or create custom code to fit those requirements. Also during this phase, any front-end should be created, either by us or a third party, so that it can be integrated into the design of the whole. We accept that there will be changes to the front-end after this phase, but it should be ready for testing by this point, if not completely finalized.

During this stage the initial design will be complete and integrated. Alpha generally means the period when the site is ready to be tested for errors in a limited, closed manner. Also during this stage, you will have the site to play with in sandbox form, so you can determine if there are any changes needed to the design. We recommend that you look over the site thoroughly, because problems and changes at this stage are much easier and cheaper to fix.

Beta can mean a number of things, depending on your needs. If you have a pool of users who are willing to test the site, during Beta the site will be live, but will not be open to the public. We typically provide a portal to the site through which your testers can access it, but which is not the final address of the site. If, on the other hand, you wish to open Beta up to the public, as a sort of soft opening, we will provide support for that as well. And if neither of those options is appropriate, we will discuss other possibilities. In any case, this stage is when the design should be finalized, and only small changes can generally be made at this stage. If any large changes are requested, we may determine that they can only be implemented by a redesign at a later date, and will discuss this with you.

When everyone is satisfied with the state of the site, it will go live in whatever manner you want, either as part of a larger site or as its own domain. At this point, while we will continue to provide support in the event of errors or basic needs, we consider the project to be finished.

Obviously, this structure only works for some people. Because we're not a huge company locked into a particular process, we can alter the structure to meet your specific needs. If your requirements are simple and you just want us to install blog software on your site and change the colors to match your logo, obviously all the above process is extraneous. If, on the other hand, you foresee a long-term design process where the site goes live fairly quickly but undergoes upgrades and redesigns over its life (or if you're interested in us doing maintenance beyond bug-fixes), that will affect the process as well. Depending on the level of commitment, our prices will increase.

However, despite being more fast and loose with process structure, there is one thing which we have learned from bitter experience, and that is that deadlines are important. Fudging a deadline by a week is one thing, but constantly shifting deadlines which never seem to be reached is another. It's important for us to know when the money will arrive, but it's also important for you to know that things will be done by a particular date. Deadlines allow both us and you to limit our impulses to continue perfecting something until it never gets done (trust us, we've done it), and provide motivation all around. We believe strongly in deadlines, if we haven't made that clear enough. If the project length is extended by any non-negligible period which was not discussed during consultation, we reserve the right to renegotiate the money involved.

If it turns out that you would be better served by obtaining/purchasing an out-of-the-box product, we will not hesitate to offer advice in that regard. If you want an in-depth cost-analysis, that's obviously going to be something for which we'd need to charge some amount, but if all you're looking for is a general recommendation, even if you wind up installing it yourself and not needing our help at all, we're happy to weigh in, free of charge. We tend to recommend Open-Source or other "free" software because it's cheaper, but we will let you know if commercial software is viable. Unfortunately, you sometimes get what you pay for, and if you're looking for simplicity and stability and are willing to pay for it, commercial software often fits the bill nicely.

The above is an example of the openness we strive for. That's a major reason why we will attempt to determine your tech comfort level, so we can tell you why some things happen, or why a design may need to be a particular way. If we can't do it, we'll try to let you know why that is, and we may share how things work, particularly if you ask. If you're someone who doesn't want to know, just tell us and we'll stop, but we do believe in openness and occasionally (see this page) get a bit chatty with regard to said openness.