Atilus Internet Marketing & Web Development

How much does a website cost? Well… that depends. How much does a building cost? “Ballpark figure. If you had to give me a number?” All buildings are different. Is this a manufactured home you’re thinking of? A commercial building? Perhaps a beautiful lake front mansion with marble Romanesque columns. I guess the answer should be… it depends. And web development is not much different.

I can’t believe that it would take a company apparently as professional as yours upwards of 12,000 to make a blog. Either you’re ripping customers off or you’re incompetent. One framework could be re-used thousands of times, saving you time and your customers money. Yes, each site needs its own modifications, but if you build a solid framework you can run pretty much anything off it.

I’ll address this comment later, but first of all I would like to thank Scott for writing and publishing his great article on our blog – to which the above was a comment - just a few weeks ago. He was really able to sum up “what does a website cost.” Without going into full detail on everything mentioned here is just a brief break down of what was discussed regarding the cost of a good website:

• $1000-$2000 Basic Design Website
• $3000-$7000 Custom Design Websites – visually attractive, completely unique design
• $7000- $12,000 Content Management System (CMS) Websites
• $12,000- $100,000+ - totally custom situations, implementation of more advanced design & programming, etc.

Visit the Complete Article - What Does a Website Cost?

Internally we had discussed the idea at length – writing an in-depth article about how much does a website cost – and, finally decided to hit “publish” after weighing everything. We effectively laid all of our cards on the table, allowing our audience, the web developer community, our competition and future clients to understand how much this web stuff costs. The truth is the biggest thing we were concerned with in writing and publishing an article like this would be backlash from the web community or independent developers. Ultimately, the benefits outweigh the negative – we have to educate the community on the steps, time, and price involved in a proper web presence.

Personally, I am sick and tired of hearing two things from new or potential clients:

Read the rest of this entry …

13 May | Post by Zach Katkin. Filed under Web Design, Business, Design.

With the arrival of the next great internet boom – the internet marketing boom - the possibilities are limitless. The internet is exploding with new features and technologies such as interactive shopping, podcasting as well as newly emerging E-marketing tools and ideas. Among these new features are WiFi advertising (advertising to users of your WIFI network), and Internet capabilities on wireless phones such as 3G (AT&T’s network).

For those of you not in the industry, internet marketing is the buzz in the advertising and marketing world. With ever changing technology and improved techniques, and a now solid foundation of return, internet marketing is slowly coming to the forefront of marketing discussions.
And this internet revolution is even outpacing newer, less conventional forms of marketing and sales. Take for example traveling on any major airline. E-ticketing is available 24 hours a day and is convenient (whereas if you call the 800 or 888 number, you will be billed a transaction fee); you can print your ticket(s) 48 hours before the flight or 1 hour before the flight, at no additional cost attached.
I think that it is important that the advantages and disadvantages are carefully studied in contrast to traditional marketing. But that doesn’t mean the industry is without its evils. Issues that are still prevalent in and around internet marketing include: spam (which needs to be more heavily regulated), consumer loyalty (which needs to be studied more), and the different advertising strategies and performance that internet marketing has over traditional marketing.

However, one of the largest concerns of the general public is security and privacy on the internet. For example, if you read my previous post “Flirting with Diaster”, the attached You Tube video has a prime example of this: When Sarah Lacy asked the audience to begin asking their questions, an audience member stood up and said “What is the biggest obstacle that Facebook faces?” Zuckerberg replied “Building systems that allow users control of their applications/information.” The audience member replied, “Is it a security issue allowing users to control of their applications/information?” See how security is reiterated each time the audience member asks a different question? I have to say, it is a major concern of the general public, and must be addressed.

On the other hand, Internet marketing has truly revolutionized the marketing industry as a whole; traditional advertising and marketing firms better sit up and take notice and quickly adapt to the to the ever changing internet/technology as the general public consumes more media, does more searches, and spends more time online. Additionally one major advantage that internet marketing has that stands out ahead of traditional advertising is that with internet marketing you are able to customize and personalize your site from start to finish, making the process interactive between the internet marketing agency/firm and the client. And these custom solutions are growing the internet eco-system. For example, custom interactive shopping has revolutionized the way the general public shops, while improving the online shopping experience.

With that said, do you think internet marketing will revolutionize traditional marketing? You be the judge.

09 May | Post by Zachary Bouchard. Filed under Web Design, Business, Pay Per Click, Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Clients, Tech Trends.

Hello to all of you web designers out there! If you’re like me, you prefer designing your sites using some form of css, especially when it comes to designing menus. We love the hover over effects, and the customizable-ness of styling both hover and non-hover states of the menu items.

Some weeks ago while finagling with an Expression Engine template, it occurred to me that it would be pretty neat if EE could add a “_selected” next to my menu item’s class name if a visitor was on that particular page. This would effectively give me the power to do things like: make the menu item that corresponds to the current page highlighted while the other menu items stay normal. So, I set off to research the documentation of EE for plugin programming. This is what I’ve created for you to use as well:

Download the Plugin: atilusmenuclass.zip

Here’s how you use it:

Once uploaded, you will be able to add this snippet inside any of your template files:

<a href="/about/" class="{exp:menuclass:item class="aboutlink" selected="_selected" uri="about"}" title="About Page">about</a>

Any parameter you pass for selected will be added trailing your class name you pass for class. The parameter uri is used to specify the page URI for which the plugin will trigger this class name change.

For example, if a visitor is at the address http://yoursite.com/contactpage/ and you have set one of your links assigned with uri=”contactpage” as well as selected=”_selected” and finally class=”contactpagelink”, the plugin will change your link’s class name to contactpagelink_selected. And of course, when the visitor is on a page other than http://yoursite.com/contactpage/ the class name will be displayed as “contactpagelink”.

Output:

If visitor is NOT on http://yoursite.com/contactpage/ :

<a href="http://yoursite.com/contactpage/" class="contactpagelink"/>

If visitor is on http://yoursite.com/contactpage/ :

<a href="http://yoursite.com/contactpage/" class="contactpagelink_selected"/>

07 May | Post by Devin Castro. Filed under Web Design, Open Source, Software, Expression Engine Plugins.

As you read this there are people working on furthering the advancement of web design. You know, like CSS3 and stuff. Well here is something that will really knock your socks off. Webkit is the next generation of web design. Here is a rundown of some of what it can do already:

CSS Gradients
No more will you have to rely on a solid background color or having to create an image to get a background gradient. Webkit allows for CSS gradients. You will be able to style any type of gradient you desire down to where the color stopper is placed (just like Photoshop).

CSS Transforms
Think of an image that you have on your page. Now let’s say you have this crazy idea of rotating it 10 degrees, or maybe even the whole site 30 (because you’re just that insane about rotations). Well Webkit allows for CSS transformations. This entails not just rotations but resizing and skewing as well. It makes the image and keeps its relative position and makes the transformation without disrupting the rest of the content around it. SWEEEEET!

CSS Transitions
Stark rollovers are a thing of the past with CSS transition. This allows for smooth rollover transitions. For example, let’s when you rollover the white background link on your page it will fade or “transition” to any color your heart desires. This can be combined with other Webkit CSS features. Anyone in the mood for a square blue link to transition to green while rotating 15 degrees and getting twice the size. Crazy! Yes. Cool! Double Yes.

And finally…
CSS Masks
This code allows you to mask images to any shape you can think of. An image can be masked by another image, an SVG vector graphic, or even CSS gradients (see above if you forgot already). But let’s say you want to mask something else on your page (because your web design madness has run wild). Well you can. Masks can be attached to any HTML element, including forms and video.

OK, time to calm down and come back to reality. Don’t look for this type of technology to run rampant all over the internet. Webkit is still under production. Plus it can only be implemented under certain browsers and other applications. Neither IE nor Firefox is on that VIP list, but Safari is.

So the future is here, but still out of reach (does that make sense). If you are still at the edge of your seat wanting more you can visit WebKit and get all the latest news and information about what is going on with this new technology.

Cliché of the Week
Wearing clothes in public

28 Apr | Post by Jacob Giesler. Filed under Web Design, Design.

As seen on Marketing Profs, ‘The SEO Rapper’ host Charles Lewis is an online marketer for Pop Labs whose alter ego—the Poetic Prophet—likes to rap about his subject of expertise. It sounds weird, but the videos are not only entertaining, they’re remarkably informative.

This video is informative from a basic web design perspective…

Watch. Learn. And bob yo’ head.

18 Apr | Post by Scott L. Clark. Filed under Web Design, Tech Trends.