How We Do It
We could babble on endlessly about workflow and methodology. Sometimes we do. What people really want to know is how we set about building a site.
The usual process looks a lot like this:
You tell us what you want:
You approach us with an outline of what you want from a site. We like to hear actual descriptions of functions rather than buzzwords.
If our estimate and your budget can peacefully co-exist we go to the specification stage.
Specification:
The specification we draw up is a full and detailed description of what the site will consist of, and how it will work. It's purpose in life is to allow us all to agree on exactly what we're building right from the start.
Interface and Graphic design:
Based on the spec we create artwork that clearly illustrates exactly how your site will look and, equally importantly, how it will be structured.
Prototyping:
This generally involves slicing the artwork up and reassembling it into a prototype web page.
Once we're all happy that the design and front-end code are useful and usable across as many platforms and browsers as possible we get onto the real engineering.
Coding:
It seems counter intuitive, but first step here is to strip the prototype code into small pieces and start telling the server how to reassemble them.
There's very little to look at this stage of work. This is because we're writing dense and impenetrable code that only web servers and certain committed geeks understand.
Populating:
Suddenly, literally overnight, you go from having one measly prototype page to having an entire site. This is the nature of dynamic sites. They suddenly leap at you out of nowhere.
At which point you know it's time to start populating the site with its content.
Testing:
Testing, well that's just being really mean to the system and simulating the clumsiest, most dim-witted user that the site will ever see. We spend happy hours trying, really trying, to make the thing break. We invite our client's to do the same.
Launch:
When the final bugs are ironed out, and we're sure that the site is bullet- and idiot-proof it's time to launch this baby.
And that's that. Until you come back to us with a wonderful idea for a sub-site that could hook into the existing site and make things even better.
You'll be back.
They always come back...