Step 1. Functional specifications
To be completed by the Functional and Data owners and Developer. Includes application functionality desired, and target audience, including expected number of concurrent users. Also, includes expected period of heavy and light activity during the year. At this point the project team including representatives from technical services and DBAs should be identified. At this point all data owners must give preliminary consent to the use of their data.

Deliverable:
Document created and distributed

Step 2. Technical design document
To be completed by the Developer. Includes preliminary data flow diagram, architectural diagram and table description reflecting the production environment. Also includes description of any new technologies or third party products to be used.

Deliverable:
Document created and distributed

Step 3. Technical design review
To be scheduled by the Developer. Included in the review are the Developer, Web Development manager, Applications Development manager, Technical Services manager, Database manager, Change Control manager and Security Officer. The purpose of the review is to ensure that architectural and security standards will be adhered to. It is at this point that any exceptions to the standards would have to be requested and discussed. Issues such as maintainability and development standards will be discussed.

Deliverables:
Meeting minutes
Create initial Security Review document

Step 4. Functional design review
To be scheduled by the Developer. Included in the review are the Developer, Web Development manager, Applications Development manager, Functional owner and Change Control manager. Functional owner signs off on design and data owners signoff on use of their data.

Deliverable:
Meeting minutes

Step 5. Development
Prototype of application is completed by the developer on local workstation following development guidelines.

Step 6. Initial security review
To be scheduled by the Change Control manager. Included in the review are the Developer, Web Development manager, Applications Development manager, Technical Services manager, Database manager, Change Control manager and Security Officer. The purpose of the review is to ensure that security standards are being followed and Holy Cross data are being protected.

Deliverables:
Meeting minutes
Security document update

Step 7. Public Affairs Notification
To be completed by the Developer. Details should include the application name, description, Functional owners, and expected location on Web site. Public Affairs can determine what involvement they require from this point forward. Any changes to files or directories outside of webapps needs to be coordinated with Public Affairs

Step 8. Unit Testing
To be completed by the Developer on local workstation.

Step 9. Functional Testing
To be completed by the Developer and Functional Users on Webdev and Webdb servers. Testing includes application functionality and integration testing with other applications and framework.

Deliverable:
High level test scenarios

Step 10. Initial change control meeting and final security review
To be scheduled by the Change Control manager. Included in the review are the Developer, Web Development manager, Applications Development manager, Technical Services manager, User Services manager, Database manager, Change Control manager, Security Officer, Functional and Data owners. The security summary will be reviewed with Functional and Data owners. The Change Control requirements needed for the production move will be detailed. These include application survey, load testing requirements, operational and system documentation, and training.

Deliverables:
Meeting minutes
Final Security signoff

Step 11. Acceptance testing on Oakham and Mendon
To be completed by the Developer. Testing includes installation of the application into the ITS infrastructure and load testing based on established criteria.

Deliverables:
Final functional specification
Final design specification

Step 12. Final change control meeting
To be scheduled by the Change Control manager. Included in the meeting are Developer, Web Applications manager, Technical Services manager, User Services manager and Functional owner. Final review and approval of load test results, application survey, operational and system documentation, and training. Set production migration date.

Deliverables:
Change Control documentation
User Services application survey
Meeting minutes

Step 13. Production migration
To be completed by Technical Services engineer and Database Administrator with written instructions provided by the Developer.

Deliverables:
Unicenter TNG monitoring needs
Operational documentation

Step 14. Post migration debrief
To be scheduled by the developer. Included in the meeting are the Developer, Web Development manager, Applications Development manager, Technical Services manager, Database manager, Change Control manager and Security Officer. Discussion of lessons learned, inconsistencies of environments, potential changes to Web development process, etc.

We hear it all the time that my brother, my cousin and my sister knows how to build web sites and they do it for cheap! Why would I have a professional build my web site?” The sad truth is that eventually the majority of these companies wish they would have started with a professional web design company.

It’s too much work for a non-professional web design company
As time goes on, these companies who have a “cheap” web designer come to us because their designer has one of the following symptoms:

• No time
• Went out of business
• Not available
• Sick and tired of making updates

And all while the company is not getting the results they had hoped for.

It is easy for us to understand why a company would shudder when thinking about hiring a professional web design company: affordability.

In this article we point out some of the things to take into consideration when you have a web site professionally built.

Benefits of a professionally designed web site
Some benefits of having a web site built by a professional organization are:

• They have the technical expertise
• You can focus more on your business
• Being found on the search engines
• Clean crisp professional design
• Easy to use and easy to navigate
• Increasing traffic to the site
• Future growth and expandability

The time and money are better spent on dealing with a professional in the field that knows these areas. Those in business know that time is money. Do the math! You are here to find out how to build your business. Your neighbor down the block does this in his spare time…who would you want to do business with?

Web design professionals know all the in’s and out’s
There are many areas to be considered when thinking of getting an online presence:

• Goals of the site
• Usability
• Professional, clean, crisp design
• Future expandability
• Who is going to keep it updated
• The information you should we have on your web site
• How your web site will be found on the internet

These are just a few areas that are analyzed when you decide to work with a professional web design company. Some areas are obviously more important than others. The company’s goals for the web site have much to do with the priority of each of the areas.

This is what we as professionals are trained to do: enable business owners to focus more on their business, and let us focus on doing what we do (building your online presence)
For example, I wouldn’t even think about designing and building my own cabinets. Considering the time it would take me to build a cabinet myself, it would be a better business decision to hire a professional carpenter or cabinet supplier to build my cabinets, so I can focus on my core business. Likewise, you have a core business model which you should be focusing on so that your business grows.
Future growth and expandability
One characteristic that professional web design companies focus on is the future expandability of the web site. This is very important when looking at the overall design. There are many packages available that will help you build a web site, but when the support for that package goes away or they go out of business, all the money that you invested into your web site is gone with the package. The professionals use industry standard coding practices so their code can be easily understood. This translates into a higher value web site that is faster to expand and grow, saving you and your business time and money.

When you invest in a professional web design company to build your online presence, what you are paying for is their experience in the field. However, the professionals aren’t for everyone, at least in the beginning. Eventually those businesses who wish to get a web site professionally made, but don’t want to spend the money, will fall into one of the following categories:

1. They will go out of business, or
2. They will end up paying a professional to build their web site

What we as professionals have seen
In our experience, the businesses that don’t invest in a professional web site eventually wish they had invested in a web design company. Considering all the important factors listed above, it is highly recommended to look closely at the benefit of working with a web design professional.

The task of building a web site and having it work for your business is too time intensive for non-professionals and the business simply won’t get the results they had hoped for without spending much time and effort learning the techniques that work well for businesses on the internet.

Conclusion
In conclusion, your job is to build your business which takes both time and energy. Save both and let professional web design companies use their time and energy to help build your business the right way.

When you get past the beginning level of SEO ( Read -Introduction to SEO techniques ) , you’ll begin hearing about a lot of terms that are unfamiliar to you. Among these are Google Page Rank and Alexa Rank. These are topics of concern for web masters who want to ensure that their sites are doing good in search engine rankings. While both Google Page Rank and Alexa Rank are important in SEO and measure much of the same thing the popularity of a website they are also different in some ways. These differences make it important to understand the very basics of both Google Page Rank and Alexa Rank, which will be covered in this lesson.

What is Google Page Rank?
Google Page Rank, as the Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin put it, is a tool developed to rank websites that are listed in the Google search engine. The page rank is given in a scale of 0-10. 0 is the lowest possible score for a site, while 10 is the highest. The higher the page ranking of your site, the greater the amount of traffic it receives.

Now you know what the Google Page Rank is. But how, exactly, is it determined? Well, Google uses a really complicated mathematical formula to determine the ranking of a page. We could literally spend this entire lesson going over this formula, which really would be a waste of time. Instead, we’ll just talk about it in a non-in depth, but still useful way.

When Google is ranking a web site, there are several factors involved. The first is the overall layout of the site and how “complete” it is. Google dislikes incomplete site maps being sent to the search engine, which is why you should only submit the site map when the site is actually finished. The second major factor is the usage of keywords. Google likes a site with good usage of keywords. They like a keyword density of 3-5%. Another major factor is that of external links. Google likes it when your site is getting linked to by other sites. That way Google can find your site more often. The last major factor is how updated the site is. Google hates outdated sites, so make sure yours is updated often. All of these factors make up the basis of the Google Page Rank.

You can determine your Google Page Rank, Alexa Page Rank, inbound links, indexed pages, important directories and site listing, press and media mentions and another 30 ranking parameters for your website using the last version of Website Popularity SEO ranking software.

What is the Alexa Rank? -

The Alexa Rank is much like the Google Rank, with one main difference: it is exclusively based on page views, number of users and three months of historical data. It is not based on SEO principles like the Google Page Rank is, although having a good SEO’d site will help the cause.

An Alexa Rank may range from 1 to a billion, depending on the number of web sites. Every web site in the world is included in the Alexa Rank, so you’re up against all of them. The goal is to have a high ranking (generally considered to be in the 1-1,000,000 range). Presently, the highest ranked site in the Alexa Rank is Yahoo.com, although Google.com poses a threat to this. You can find out your Alexa Page Rank by going to Alexa.com directly or checking using the Website Popularity.
How can I improve my Google Page Rank?

The good thing about the Google Page Rank is that it can be improved pretty easily. Follow these suggestions to improve yours:
1. Create a site that is search engine optimized. Your site should be full of quality content that doesn’t fall short in terms of keywords and keyword density. Strive for a keyword density of 3-5% and make sure that all keywords and content are relative to your site’s purpose.
2. Use META and title tags correctly. One of the biggest factors in search engine optimizing a site is that of the META and title tags. When using these, you should make sure that the title tag is accurate and that the META tag describes your site well. For tips on META and title tags, check out Lesson 4: Title and META tag creation
3. Submit all pages to the Google site map. Do so only when the site is completed.
4. Build targeted traffic to your website. How can I improve my Alexa Rank?

To improve the Alexa Rank, all you need to do is improve your traffic to your site. Following the tips in the above section and in the next lessons should help you to increase traffic, which will, in turn, increase your Alexa Rank. There are tools out there which claim to improve the Alexa Rank, however, these are usually not very effective and may do more harm than good to your site’s ranking. Do not go for submission to 300,000 search engines, this is the worst thing you can do.

Search Engine Optimization. If you’re a web master, you’ve probably heard this phrase mentioned often. If you’re someone who has been doing web master work for years, you might not be very familiar with what search engine optimization (SEO) is. That’s OK, as it’s not something that many people have learned about. While it’s not as common knowledge as it should be, SEO isn’t a very difficult subject to learn thoroughly enough. In fact, learning the techniques of SEO can actually be very easy. We’ll teach you all about SEO in this lesson ( Just kidding, we will need more lessons for this job ).

What is SEO? 
SEO is search engine optimization. What does this mean? Well, it essentially means you are creating a site that is search engine friendly. Search engines, as you probably know, are responsible for a lot of your web site’s traffic. The more search engine friendly a site is, the greater the chance people using a search engine will find the site. Basically, by making your site SEO, you are increasing your traffic. That’s why SEO is a very important part of current web master work. Here are some essential SEO tips that every web site should follow. Design your web site by following these tips and I guarantee that visitors will have a great first impression of your site. 

Search Engine Optimization Techniques -
Now that you know what SEO is, you’ll want to know how to apply it to your web site so that you, too, can reap the benefits. There are several SEO techniques to learn, and we’ll cover three very important ones that you can apply immediately to your site.

Search Engine Optimization Technique #1: Keywords and Key phrases-

The most basic SEO technique is that of the use of keywords and key phrases. Keywords are basically words that a search engine spider (basically a program which scans web sites and reports its findings back to the search engine database) is trained to find. If these words are found, the site is more likely to catch the attention of the spider and get listed. Key phrases are just like keywords, except they are basically two or more words strung together. For instance, a common key phrase might be “cool web sites”. Using such a key phrase or key word enough can really help a site to become SEO friendly. Search Engine Optimization

Technique #2: Correct Titles

If you look at the top left of your web browser, you’ll notice a piece of text that states what site you are on and perhaps also gives a brief description of what the site is. This piece of text is known as the “Title” of a web page. The title is one of the first things a search engine spider will notice when visiting a site. Thus, it is important to make sure your web site has a meaningful title. The title should not include excessive amounts of keywords, and whatever keywords you do use should be relevant to the site at hand. Spiders have been trained to spot sites with excessive amounts of keywords and they will ignore such sites. So don’t ever overuse keywords. If you have a site dedicated to PRS electric guitars, an appropriate SEO title might be something like “PRS Electric Guitars.com – Your source for PRS guitars”.

Search Engine Optimization Technique #3: Keyword Density-

There is such a thing as overusing keywords, and it can be worse than using no keywords at all in terms of getting ranked highly on a search engine. Keyword density is the number of keywords divided by the number of total words in a page. So if you have 500 total words and 10 keywords, you’d have 2% keyword density. An appropriate keyword density is anywhere between 2% and 7%.Anything more than this is considered keyword stuffing; anything less than this is considered too little to make an impact.

Going beyond the obvious — good grammar, spelling and choosing a clean, clear typeface — there are many things that you can do to write quality content for your website.

Content is king of all kings they say. This has never been so true as it is when you are talking about web content. There is so much information available on the web these days that people expect information to be unique, timely and relevant. The content needs to be fast loading, clean and easy to read, easy to navigate and especially easy for the search engines to index.

1) Make your content interesting.
Don’t just provide dry information and facts. Make it lively and entertaining whenever possible. Sell yourself, your services or your product. Use humor and make yourself likable. Put yourself into your client’s shoes and try to write your content as if you were trying to convince yourself to buy, sign-up, or request your own service. What would make you buy your product?

2) Write about things and provide information that you know well.
Do it quickly and efficiently so you get your message across fast but also make quality use of the time someone is spending reading your site. If you try to cover a large topic in a mediocre or unconvincing way, people will probably not bookmark and return or even worse they many not even finish reading and move on.

3) keep your content short and sweet when possible.
The first paragraph of your article is critical. If it’s dull, boring and lifeless, your reader will surely move on. You must keep their interest right from the start and drive them to pick up the phone or pull out their credit card. On the web people like to get information fast and it better be good. Don’t drone on for pages trying to sell and convince people. Give it to them straight and to the point and then if you feel that it might be beneficial to expand on your topic then do so. But never drag out a sales pitch. Allow your visitors to get the information they need and then if they want more you can always provide it.

4) Make your content load fast.
There is nothing more irritating than a site that loads slow. There are many reasons for this and the reasons can sometimes be out of your hands like the users connection speed, network congestion, slow host server, etc. But overall you and your web developer have control over your content.

 5) Provide content that is broken up into short paragraphs and short pages.
People are much more able to digest content faster if the information is given to them in short bursts instead of long clumps of text.

6) Do not use images to replace text.
They take longer to load, they really don’t look much better, blind people can’t read it and that text will no longer be searchable by the search engines.

7) Only underline links and make sure you have actual links underlined
if the link is included in a paragraph of text. If you underline text to emphasize something but it is not an actual link, your readers will almost certainly be confused. The same goes for links that are not underlined. People may miss out on valuable information because they have no idea that the text leads to something more detailed or interesting.

Structure your text.
Make use of bold headings, short paragraphs, bullet lists and tables if the information requires it. To better organize your thoughts, divide your article into sub-headings. Sub-headings make things easier to digest. Instead of tackling the entire article at once, try writing one paragraph at a time.

9) Use words in your content that people will search for.
Search engines consider headings, page titles, bold and linked text to be more important and relevant and the precise wording of these sections of your content are extremely important.

10) Create a lot of links and use relevant keyword phrases as the link text.
Ask other sites with similar content to link to your site and most important, tell them the text to use in the link.

11) Make good use of white space and allow your content to breathe
Don’t allow text to butt up against graphic elements on your site or photographs, etc. Don’t place too much emphasis on your navigation elements if content is important to your site. Allow users to easily read your message in a clean, uncluttered and — in the case of blinking text — non-irritating environment.

12) Write your own content.
Use only content (pictures, text, videos …) made by you or with explicit permission, everything else probably infringes someone’s copyright.