Website Features
Contents
This section describes the typical features that ypu can choose to incorporate into your website when using the Aardstorm website design or implementation services. Most of these features are applicable to both services, although certain features may be more applicable to one service or the other, and some of them may also affect our management service. The main difference in the provision of these features between our design and implementation services is in the extent to which you as our client have control over their detailed visual appearance and behaviour; see the descriptions of the individual services for more details. Details of our standard charges for including these features in your website are given on our fees summary page.
Page Size
We can produce pages that respond to changes in width of the user's browser window in the following ways:
- Solid. The page width does not change at all with changes in browser window size, the difference being taken up with a simple background colour, pattern or image. This gives you maximum control over the visual appearance of you pages, but the page width needs to be relatively small to accommodate users with lower resolution monitors, which can then look odd when viewed at high window widths.
- Liquid. The page always fills the width of the browser window, eliminating the wasted background area of the solid layout, but the page layout can look cramped, or even trigger certain types of browser bugs, if the browser window is small, or lead to uncomfortably long lines of text if the window is large.
- Semi-Liquid. The page width varies with window size like the liquid layout, but with minimum and maximum limits at which the page solidifies to avoid problems with excessively small or large window sizes. The page width can also be configured to change at slower rate than the browser window between the limits, so that the background borders appear at smaller window sizes, before the maximum limit is reached.
As a client of our implementation service, the choice is yours, according to the visual effect that you wish to achieve. For clients of our design service, we will choose a behaviour appropriate to our design of your pages. This will most likely be the semi-liquid option with appropriate minimum and maximum limits and the borders only appearing at window sizes over the maximum limit.
Page Layout - Design Service
As a client of our design service, we will provide you with a standard basic page layout consisting of:
- Header, with title text and logo graphics to match your existing company letterhead or other publicitiy material that you supply to us.
- Navigation controls, chosen from our standard range, arranged either across the page, just below the header, or down one side (or both, if the size of your site justifies it). If the complexity of your site justifies it, we will also include a 'breadcrumb trail' of context-sensitive links that allow users to easily keep track of where they are in the page hierarchy, and return to higher levels.
- Footer, with standard copyright notice, a 'top of page' link, a link to this site, and a simplified set of navigation controls.
The remainder of the page is then available for specific page content, with text and pictures that we will arrange appropriately from the material that you supply, as described below. You will be free to choose the style and colour of many of the standard features making up your pages, such as page background, text and navigation controls, or you can leave the choice up to us. See our colour, text style, and navigation controls galleries for the range of standard options available.
Page Layout - Implementation Service
As a client of our implementation service, the division of the main page area into areas for headers, footers, navigation controls, text and images is up to you; we will follow your design. You should, however, specify how these areas are to change (if at all) with variations in page size. The pages of many websites can often be grouped together into sections that follow a common basic design, differing only in the main content text and images. The design groups also often share many design features that vary in limited ways between sections. You do not, therefore, need to supply us with a detailed design for every individual page of your site: just a limited number of basic page layout designs, possibly with variations, together with separate individual page content details.
You also have full control over the visual appearance and behaviour of the navigation controls that users of your new website will use to move between pages. Please specify how the controls are to look, whether (and how) they are are to change when a user moves the mouse over them or clicks on them, and whether you are to supply the necessary graphics. You may also select from our standard range of control designs, and either use them as is, with appropriate choice of colours, or use them as a basis for your own designs. If the complexity of your site justifies it, we can also include a 'breadcrumb trail' of context-sensitive links that allow users to easily keep track of where they are in the page hierarchy, and return to higher levels.
Page Content
Each page in your site will typically contain a custom arrangement of text, pictures, or other graphics, within your standard page layout described above. Our standard fees assume that you supply all of such text, pictures, and graphics to be included in each page; we will convert the information you supply into appropriate web formats, and arrange them on each page. If you want us to generate some or all of the detailed text for your site from general information that you supply, then you can commission us to do so using our authoring service. We can also similarly locate or create suitable pictures or graphics for your site through our picture services.
We can also incorporate or adapt any of our standard pages, for inclusion in your new site. The standard pages that we offer at present are:
Contact Us Page
This page contains your basic contact information, such as contact names, postal address and telephone and/or fax numbers. It also contains a set of text input boxes and a submit button to allow users of your site to contact you by e-mail. A control allows users to select from a limited number of destinations for their message. When the submit button is clicked, the message text and contact details they have entered is compiled into an e-mail that is sent to the selected destination. This form-based contact technique is used to hide your actual contact e-mail address from the automated e-mail address gathering programs commonly used by spammers. We will automatically add our own 'webmaster' contact destination to this page, so that we can handle queries about your site as part of our standard management service. See the 'Contact Us' page in the forms section of this site for an example of the content of this page.
Link to Us Page
You may wish to encourage other websites to link to yours (for example to help improve your search engine ranking). To help with this, we can provide a simple 'link to us' page that gives others permission to link to your site (possibly with certain conditions), together with example code for them to use in constructing that link. See the 'Link To Us' page in the forms section of this site for an example of the content of this page.
Terms and Conditions Page
We can provide a simple terms and conditions page to cover use of your site, and the material contained within it. See the 'Use of this Site' page in the terms and conditions section of this site for an example of the content of this page. Note that these terms and conditions will not cover the purchase of goods or services through your site; you will need to supply the text for these as a normal custom page.
Catalogue, Library and Gallery Pages
Some pages of your new site may share a common page layout of text sections and picture locations beyond the common features of your basic page layout(s), differing only in the actual text and pictures included on each page. Examples of such pages are a catalogue of item descriptions, a library of articles, or a gallery of pictures with captions. These pages are most efficiently handled by separating the content design from the actual content into a template page and content database. Adding, removing, or changing these pages is then a simple matter of changing the content of the database. This database can be located either:
- On-line, on the server with your website. Here, the individual pages will be generated 'on the fly' by populating the template with appropriate content each time a user accesses them. We can provide special restricted-access pages that will allow you to modify the content of the database (and the resulting pages) yourself.
- Off-line. Here, the individual pages will be automatically generated by running a suitable script program whenever the database content changes, and then uploaded to your website. We will retain control of the template, database, and page generation script, and will add, update, or remove pages for you as part of our management service.
The off-line version minimises the load on the server hosting your website, and hence page access times for your users, while the on-line version allows you to modify the content of your pages yourself. The additional flexibility of the on-line version does, however, bring with it the risk of unauthorised access to, and modification of, your database, and hence page content. It also brings with it the need to regularly store the contents of the database away from the server, as a backup that can be used to easily restore the on-line database should it become corrupted, or something untoward happen to the server. We therefore recommend the off-line option unless the ability to modify the pages yourself is an important requirement.
A group of such database-driven pages will typically be linked by one or more index pages containing descriptive links to the individual pages arranged in some logical order. These allow users to easily find the page of interest by simply clicking a few links. There may also be several sets of index pages for a single set of database-driven pages, to allow the links to be sorted according to different criteria. The index pages themselves will also be automatically derived from the same database.
Search Facility
We can also supply a site search facility for your new website, to allow users of your site to search it for pages containing key words of their choice. The searches may cover your whole site, or may be restricted to a subset of pages, such as those derived from a database as described above.
Interactive Forms
These are used to gather information from users of your website, for example to contact you (or us, as your webmasters) with questions, request a quotation for your services, subscribe to a newsletter, enter a competition, or place an order. We expect you to specify what information you want to gather for each form. We will then create an appropriate set of input controls, such as a text entry boxes, drop-down lists, radio buttons, etc., to request each piece of information from your user.
Unless it is to be stored in some form of on-line database, the information gathered by each form on your website will be automatically formatted into an e-mail that will be sent to an address of your choice. You can use a separate address for each form, or several forms can share a single address: the choice is yours.
Restricted Access Areas
We can incorporate into your new website a facility that restricts access to certain pages to only certain authorised users. Such users could be your colleagues or employees, clients of your services, or subscribers to your website.In the latter case, the content of the restricted access area could be a simple reward for provision of information to you for marketing purposes, or may require some form of payment to gain access. Administration of the list of authorised users can be controlled by us on your behalf (through our management service), by you (through a higher level of restricted access), or automatically by allowing users to manage their own access accounts.
Newsletters and Mailing Lists
We can add pages to your website that allow users to sign up to a newsletter or other form of mailing list. This could take the form of a simple form page that packages the subscribers information into an e-mail that is then sent to an off-line list manager, or the subscription form could be linked to an on-line database that allows your subscribers to manage their own subscriptions. The latter will also require a restricted-access page that allows the newsletter to be uploaded and then distributed to subscribers. In either case, facilities can also be provided to allow subscribers to select the type of newsletter that they wish to receive, such as plain text, HTML, or attached PDF. The subscription form could also gather other information about your subscribers that allows mail to be targetted at specific groups of subscribers.
We can manage the resulting mailing list(s) on your behalf, through our management service, or you can do it yourself. We can also help you prepare the individual newsletters for distribution to your subscribers, through our document and picture services.
Competitions and Draws
Free to enter competitions and prize draws can be a good method of drawing additional visitors to your website. We can incorporate a suitable entry page in your new website, and then update it with new questions, etc. as each competition closes and another one starts. We can also help you manage each competition by receiving each entry and then selecting the winner(s) once the competition has closed. Generating the competition questions, and supplying the prize to the winner(s), will be up to you. Alternatively, you can manage the competition yourself, either manually by receiving each e-mail entry, or by linking the entry page to an on-line database with a restricted-access page that allows you to set the questions, start and end each competition, and select the winner(s).
Any competition that you choose to incorporate into your website must comply with the relevant UK laws. The easiest way of achieving this is to make it completely free to enter, with no strings attached, open to anyone not directly connected with it, and with each (correct) entry having an equal chance of winning. Imposing any form of payment (not necessarily monetary) as a condition of entry will mean that the competition will have to meet further requirements if it is to be legal, such as requiring an exercise of skill of sufficient difficulty to deter a significant portion of potential entrants - and being able to prove this if challenged.
e-Commerce Facilities
At present, the only e-commerce facilities we can supply for your site are simple PayPal 'pay now' buttons. You will therefore have to have a PayPal account to be able to use these features, although your customers will be able use a wide range of credit or debit cards, and will not need a PayPal account themselves. We are working on providing a simple shopping cart facility, and also alternative payment services.
e-Mail Facilities
As part of your new website, we can also provide a set of mailboxes to allow you to receive e-mail through your site. These will share the same basic domain name as your site, with individual box names that you specify. For example, if the domain name of your new site is www.your-company.com, then the mailboxes will have addresses of the form box-name@your-company.com. We will provide the necessary information to allow you to set up your e-mail client program (such as Microsoft Outlook, etc.) to receive the e-mail from these boxes, or we can set them to automatically forward all e-mail to another address (or addresses) of your choice. Once your site is up and running, it will be up to you to regularly check your mailboxes for received mail. You will also be able to request changes to the way your mailboxes are set up through our site management services.