Gilmore Design Group :: Design InSight October 2005

	*October 2005*

Happy Halloween ...
October is here already and we'd like to wish you all a Happy Halloween. This month, be sure to fill out our survey. We are looking for general insight into the many things we do, from your thoughts on our newsletters to your thoughts on a couple new services/products that we may be adding. Rest assure that any information you enter in the survey will never be sold to a third party. We will be using the information to better understand our clients and potential customers. This will help us offer more relavant services and information.



www.chippewaceramicsdentallab.com

Client:	Chippewa Ceramics

Project:	Website Design

Services

	Project Management
	Website Design
	Website Development

Objective: To create a quality website that will display the craftsmanship and commitment to customer service that Chippewa Ceramics prides itself on.

Solution: By designing a clean, yet elegant website, we were able to make the site easy-to-use while exuding professionalism. We are very proud of this site for its well-organized navigation and clean design. By utilizing these key components, we were able to create a beautiful and professinal online presence for Chippewa Ceramics Dental Laboratory.

Testimonial
"Gilmore Design Group has the capability and desire to produce quality, interesting web sites. Christine paid very close attention to detail and how we wanted to project ourselves as a company. She worked very closely with us and accomplished the task in a very short amount of time. Our web site is more than we even hoped for.

Thank you, Christine."

- Dennis Heavilin, Chippewa Ceramics Inc.

Contrast
The relationship between the lightest and darkest areas in a scene and/or photograph. A small difference means low contrast; a great difference high contrast.

So what does this mean to us and how can we use it? The way contrast can be used to add interest to a design is by making things drastically different on a page to create a striking interest. However, in order for contrast to add value to your design you'll need to make your contrasting items very different . be bold. If you are using black and white to add contrast then add large areas of black with big bold black text to make the design pop.

URL (Uniform Resource Locator)
URL is an address referring to a document on the Internet. In other words, it is the address of an individual web page element or web document on the Internet. The syntax of a URL consists of three elements:

the protocol , or the communication language, that the URL uses;
the domain name , or the exclusive name that identifies a web site; and
the path name of the file to be retrieved, usually an HTML document.

For example, the URL for our home page:

Question:
What is hosting and why do I need it?

Answer:
While web pages are designed and developed on a single computer, they must be uploaded to a web server, or host, so that they are available for other people to find and view over the Internet.

A host / web server is simply a computer that has a constant, high speed connection to the Internet.

When you are ready to host your site, there are a few options available to you.

Your own web server.
Technically, you can put your website on a computer that you leave connected to the internet in your closet. However, we wouldn't recommend this option for many reasons:

1. It's unsecure and dangerous, which means people can hack into your site.

2. If you have a power outage or your internet goes down, so does your website and potentially your email.

3. Unless you are running a backup, you may lose your entire website if your computer crashes.

A shared hosting account.
You can purchase a shared hosting account (rent space on a common server) through a website hosting company. This is a great solution for most small businesses, as it's the most cost-effective option for most websites.

A dedicated server.
You can purchase a dedicated server (a server all to yourself) through a website hosting company. This is a good option for many companies that store credit cards and/or may need to configure a server for their specific needs. Even though you can have a more customized and secure server, this is a more costly solution with pricing anywhere from $125 a month and up.

No matter what you choose, we always recommend utilizing a good, reputable website hosting company. Reputable hosting companies are setup for website hosting, which means they have a direct and fast connection to the internet (and the faster the direct connection to your server the faster your website will download), climate controlled facilities, nightly backups, 24 hour surveillance and customer support.

Once you've chosen your preferred hosting account, your website can be uploaded and will be live for all the world to see.