Website Development

How We Can Help

We’re excited to begin working with you to grow your business’s online presence. Our team will help design and build your website using your input and content. We can help you from start to finish and will guide you along in the process.

Key Points

• Our team will design your website using your content, colors, and branding.
• We will guide you through the process of how to get setup with a hosting provider and how to create your website.
  • If using Amazon’s AWS hosting service, we can even do the setup process for you. Just invite us to your AWS account, and we’ll do all the tedious parts for you.
• The end result is you will have a modern website that works great on mobile devices, complies with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) standards, and is easy to manage and maintain.
• The website we build for your will be entirely yours, even if you choose not to continue using our services.

Prerequisites

Ready to begin? Get in touch with one of our team members and we will guide you through the setup process. There is a lot to go over at first, so please make sure you do not begin without first receiving contact from one of our team members.

To utilize our website development services, you will need to complete the following:

1. Choose a hosting provider.
   • We recommend using Amazon’s AWS hosting service. To begin, head over to aws.amazon.com/lightsail and click the “Get Started with Lightsail” button. If you have an Amazon AWS account (which is not the same as having an Amazon Shopping account), then sign-in using that. Otherwise, you will need to create a new AWS account by following the the on-screen instructions.
   • You can use an alternative hosting provider (GoDaddy, JustHost, HostGator, etc), however, Grindless’s support staff will not be able to provide as thorough of support in regard to setting up your website. If you use a provider other than AWS, then we will still help design and build your website, but you will be expected to manage the website’s operational needs, including server management, SSL certificates, DNS settings, CDN, Database, and so on.
2. Install WordPress.
   • Amazon’s Lightsail service offers WordPress environments that can be deployed very quickly and easily. Amazon has a guide for how to accomplish this step-by-step here: https://aws.amazon.com/getting-started/hands-on/launch-a-wordpress-website – You can either go through the setup process yourself, or you can invite one of our Development Team Members to your Amazon account so that we can set it up for you.
   • WordPress is one of the most popular website platforms in the world. It has been around for many years and has an enormous wealth of resources available for it. It is recommended by our team because of its easy-to-use interface, its flexibility through 3rd-party plugins, security, and other modern features (including SEO). It scales very well from a small personal blog to huge websites receiving millions of views per day. For a few examples of what kinds of websites are powered by WordPress, click here.
3. Invite our Development Team to access your website.
   1. After your website is online, create an Administrator user in your WordPress website and send the login credentials to us. Our team will use that login to access your site and begin building how your site will look and feel.

Additional Considerations

Domains

As part of the setup process, you will need to purchase a domain (MyCompany.com, for example). Domains are typically fairly cheap at around $12 per year. Amazon AWS’s Route 53 service offers domain purchasing and management.

Summary: Every website needs one, including yours.
Cost: About $12/year for simple domain names.

Content Delivery Networks

Depending on how much traffic your website receives and how much data you intend on storing on it, it may be wise to setup a Content Delivery Network (CDN). This allows your website’s server to be more “focused” in that it only has to deal with serving people your website’s structure and all of the images, videos, and larger files can be served from a dedicated network of servers that are designed to serve lots of files across the globe very quickly.

Summary: Recommended for websites that generate tens of thousands of views per month.
Cost: Varies.

SSL And Security

These days, most every website is protected by SSL encryption. When a website uses an SSL certificate, it helps the visitor feel confident that the site they are seeing is from your domain’s authorized server. Aside from server identity certification, SSL certificates also “scramble” data that is sent to and from your website’s visitors so that it cannot be easily spied upon by 3rd-parties along the way. The certificate is used as a key to lock data sent from your server and only the visitor’s web browser can unlock it.

Summary: Recommended but not required. If running an online store from your website, SSL is strongly recommended.
Cost: About $60/year.

Email Delivery

Your website will need to be able to dispatch emails to you and your users in certain limited scenarios. If you need to reset your password, for example, the website will need to email you a link that you click on. You can make use of Amazon’s email services (SES, WorkMail), or you can use an existing email provider if you have one.

Summary: Highly recommended.
Cost: $4/mo (WorkMail). Cheaper options available.

Ongoing Maintenance

A website is a system with several parts. It is not uncommon for a website to be left running for years and years, but it is very wise and encouraged to check-in on things periodically to ensure there are no new problems. Just as you would take your car in to get serviced every now and then, you should plan on logging into your website periodically to ensure things are running smoothly. Installing updates is usually a straightforward process, but it is a task that should be performed by someone who is capable of fixing issues that certain updates can introduce. If you are not a very tech-savvy person yourself, then you should consider if you need to include someone else to do this for you. Our Development Team can also help perform these updates for you.

Ongoing Support

Need help with your website? Did something break? Do you need to make a change? Do you want to add a new page? Get in touch with us to begin. We’ll be happy to help you achieve your goals online.