We recommend that you read the following article on the Arnima Learning Center before you hire a web design & development company for your web project: http://www.arnimalearningcenter.com/before-hiring-a-web-design-company.html.

Here is a link to an article posted on the Arnima Learning Center that explains How to Optimize Website Performance for best results.

A good article on how to write excellent content for your website that appreaed on the Arnima Learning Center.

Read the article on the Arnima Learning Center Website.

We are excited to introduce our "Websites on a Budget" Offering via Arnima Express.

Arnima Express was created with a simple and a single goal - to provide high-quality and fully-functional websites on a budget. We identified a need in the market and Arnima Express simply fills that need

Consider a simple situation – you start a business and you immediately realize that one of the first things you require is a website. You look around, you talk to friends, family, associates and you realize that it will not be that simple to find a company that will suit your needs – primarily because your research has uncovered that a custom website can cost anywhere from $2,500 and up!

Don’t be dejected or discouraged – our websites are fully functional, don’t cost a fortune and allow you to scale up as you grow your business.

Don’t believe us? Check out our Demo Websites and look at our Pricing. And then decide for yourself. And Get Started when you are ready.

And, oh, check out our blog post on Arnima Express @  http//arni.ma/aexp-intro

In Part 1 of this series, we covered the first 5 questions. Now, in Part 2, we cover the remaining 6 questions.

6. Do you have a formal design & development process?
A well-outlined and formal web design & development process will indicate that a company has invested the time and effort into processes which means that they are serious about what they do. It will also allow you to determine their level of expertise. In fact, beware of a company that does not have a formal process in place. Well established companies will also educate you as to your roles and responsibilities and what feedback and input would be required from you during the project.

7. How do you handle changes?
A proper change management process is essential. Let’s face it; at some point in time, your website will need changes or updates. A properly implemented change management mechanism is important as it will ensure that the changes are
(a) properly reported
(b) actually implemented
(c) reported back to you and
(d) tested to make sure all works well.

You will also need to find out what types of maintenance options are provided and what the associated charges are.

8. What types of technologies do you work with?
The answer to this question is critical. Given the ever-evolving nature of technology, companies must make the effort to keep up with the times. A good web design & development company will be able to work in ASP.NET, ASP, PHP, AJAX and various scripting languages such as JavaScript and VBScript. They should also have significant expertise in database technologies such as Microsoft SQL Server, mySQL, Oracle, Microsoft Access. In terms of design tools, look for names such as Adobe, Microsoft and other recognizable companies that put out serious design & development tools

9.  Do you provide website hosting services?
Get a clear answer. If a company provides in-house hosting, at the very least, make sure that they are not hosting your mission critical website on a server in their basement, or in their office. If they outsource, make sure that you know what SLAs (Service Level Agreements) are in place and where the hosting company is located.

10. Who owns the website code after work is completed?
If you are spending several thousands of dollars on your website, there is only one acceptable answer. You as the client will own the website, the code, media and all content.  If your website uses components such as a content management system, or a shopping cart system, be sure to find out about the licensing and ownership.

11. How do you charge?
There are 2 ways for a web design & development company. They can charge you for time, i.e. by the hour, day, week or month. Or they can charge you a fixed amount for your project. Bear in mind that in order to establish a fixed cost, the requirements and specifications have to be very clearly laid out. In fact, most web projects can be estimated fairly accurately if a given company has the experience in the industry. If a company is unwilling to give you a fixed cost for a project, it is advisable to be careful…time-based billing can get ridiculously expensive.

In part 1, we will cover the first 5 questions. This will be followed by the second part where we will cover the remaining 6 questions.

1. Why should I hire your company and not a freelance web designer?
It depends. Whilst independent web designers, some of whom are extremely good, have a lot to offer, be sure to consider that a web design & development company will have in place, at the very least, the following:
(a) robust design, development and test processes
(b) access to the knowledge and expertise of an entire team of highly-qualified individuals
(c) a proper quality assurance mechanism
(d) access to large library of tools and components
(e) the ability to collectively solve problems and brainstorm as a team.

2. How long has your company been in business?
There is no hard and fast rule here. It ultimately depends on your comfort level, and, equally importantly on the cost factors. You may be comfortable working with a startup, or with a company without much experience, however, be sure to give this due consideration. Bear in mind if a company has been around for a long time, chances are they know what they are doing and thus they may be worth considering.

3. Can you show us samples of your work?
A good web design & development company should have a varied portfolio and this portfolio should illustrate their capabilities. A few important things to watch for: creativity, uniqueness of design, streamlined navigation and how well the design represents a brand.

4. Can you provide client testimonials?
Well established web presence companies will be happy to provide you with a list of satisfied clients. In fact, most of them would also make this list of testimonials available on their websites. If a company is unable to supply you with testimonials, or is unwilling to supply them, it should raise a red flag.

5. How experienced is your team?
A proper team structure will ensure that your project is handled in a professional fashion. A proper team structure indicates that a company has spent time and effort into cultivating a team culture. Any company that is serious about what they do will be happy to have you go to their offices and meet with their staff. If a company balks at a face-to-face meeting, well, you get the hint.

As defined in Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
• Web 2.0…refers to a perceived second generation of web-based  communities and hosted services  - such as social-networking sites,  wikis and folksonomies  -  which facilitate collaboration and sharing between users .
• Is not an update to Web technical specifications.  Instead…“it is a change in how we use the internet”

Web 2.0 is defined as a set of Web-based software services that encourage users to become more involved in the creation and manipulation of data. Web 2.0 websites allow users to do more than just retrieve information.

As the name suggests, Web 2.0 represents an important shift in the way digital information is created, shared, stored, distributed, and manipulated. In the years ahead, it will have a significant impact in the way businesses use both the Internet and enterprise-level IT applications. The phrase “Web 2.0” was first coined by Darcy DiNucci in 1999 but came into notice in the year 2004 when O'Reilly Media and MediaLive hosted the first 2.0 web conference.
 
Web 2.0 is simply a marketing strategy using one or many of the social media outlets. Those outlets are broken down into 6 different types:

1. Social Networking - the most popular of these outlets include Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, DirectMatches, Ryze and Orkut in india.
2. Social Bookmarking - well known ones include Digg, Technorati, Del.icio.us, Reddit, and StumbleUpon. Originally, social bookmarks were places you could store your favorite bookmarks online, so that you could access your bookmarks from anywhere, not just your own computer. Social bookmarking has evolved as people began to share their bookmarks with others.
3. Content Sharing - best known sites for content sharing are Wikipedia, Squidoo, Hubpages, Gather and E-zine Articles. Content sharing sites are great for people who don't have any web skills but want to share content on the internet.
4. Media Sharing - most well known are YouTube, Flickr, SlideShare, JamGlue;
5. Blogging – these are online dairies which facilitate the readers to post interactive comments. They are primarily textual, although some focus on art (Art blog), photographs (photoblog), videos (Video blogging), music (MP3 blog), and audio (podcasting). Microblogging is another type of blogging, featuring very short posts. The most popular amongst them are Blogger, WordPress, TypePad, etc.
6. Adapters - Amazon, Google Products, Cafe Press - these are traditional websites that "adapted" their products to the social marketing scene. 

In all, we can say that Web 2.0 is a compact form of technologies, people, and attitude merged together, that has created an important shift in the way we think about and use the Internet. It facilitates a number of ways to benefit business by saving time and money, and offering a new mode of interaction with customers. Though, it has advantages of emerging technologies but must be used keeping the security aspects in mind.

  

Every time you are surfing the net you encounter something known as TLDs. After all what is it and how is it used?  TLDs are the Top Level Domains and they are the last part of an Internet domain name. Let’s take an example, in the domain name Arnima.com, the top-level domain is the three letters “com”. Look it’s not any more complicated than that!

The top-level domains (TLDs) are the highest level of domain names of the Internet.  The Domain Name System was created in the 1980s, and then the domain name space was divided into two main groups of domains. The country code top-level domains (ccTLD) were primarily based on the  territory codes of ISO-3166 country abbreviations. On the other hand, a group of seven generic top-level domains (gTLD) was implemented which represented a set of categories of names and multi-organizations.


gTLDs - Generic domains
 
A gTLD, is a top-level domain and is used in particular by a specific type of organization. These generic TLDs are three or more letters long, and they're named to be a good fit to the organization.
When top-level domains were first implemented, in January 1985, there were seven gTLDs:
•    ARPA --  Advanced Research Projects Agency
•    COM -- commercial
•    EDU -- educational establishments (primarily U.S.)
•    GOV -- U.S. government
•    NET -- network infrastructure
•    ORG -- non-profit organizations
•    MIL -- U.S. military


You must have come across with the most popular domain extensions on the web -  .BIZ, .NAME, .MOBI, etc. They are all known as generic top-level domains (gTLDs) and are open for registration to all users worldwide, regardless of their citizenship, residence or age.
 
•    unsponsored top-level domains: domains operating directly under policies established by ICANN processes for the global Internet community.
•    sponsored top-level domains (sTLD): The private organizations proposed  and sponsored these domains Use is based on community theme concepts.
•    infrastructure top-level domain: It's a group that consists of one domain, the Address and Routing Parameter Area (ARPA). It is managed by IANA.


ccTLD - Country Code Top-Level Domain

ccTLD is an Internet top-level domain generally used or reserved for a country or a dependent territory.
Each country has a unique two-character abbreviation which is added at the end of the domain name (e.g. .us for US, .de for Germany, .uk for United Kingdom, .in for India, etc). Some countries have sold the rights to their ccTLDs (e.g. Tuvalu and .tv).
 
A new add-on to this is a group of internationalized domain name (IDN) top-level domains that has been installed under test for testing purposes. The countries and territories may apply for IDN ccTLDs from November 2009.
You may refer to the following links for the authoritative list of currently existing TLDs in the root zone:-
 http://www.iana.org/domains/root/db/ and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_domains

If you are planning on getting started with a new website project, the following is a list of pitfalls to avoid toensure the successful completion of yourwebsite project:

1. Most beautiful website in theworld - This is the most common pitfall. People spend countless hours creating a“beautiful’ website without considering what is needed for optimal performance.

If you have a business where beautyand creativity of the website is the most important thing and you have adevelopment company that can support you in creating that piece-of-art, thenperhaps the time, money and effort is worth it. Better, though, to create aprofessional, tidy site that works according to your needs, than to spend timeon creating a piece of art.

It takes great effort to generatebusiness from your website. Place your time and effort in marketing and keepingyour website updated.

2. Most feature rich website in theworld - Do not try to add all the possible features in one effort. Websitedevelopment is an evolutionary process. Start with a minimum, required featureset, then plan to add features as your needs grow.

3. Website with richest content -Again, it is not possible to add every single bit of appropriate content at theonset of your project, or to have the best content in one step. Plan to havethe basic content required to make your website functional first. Once your websiteis launched, you should work on constantly updating and adding content.

4.  Website with great animation and flash effects- Flash and animation effects looks cool, agreed. But do not overdo it. Flashand other animation effects make websites heavy and it takes longer to load thewebsite. Normal users do not like waiting for websites to load. Even searchengines don’t like slow websites. Flash and animation also add costs todevelopment. I suggest keeping the effects to a minimum.

5. Totally bug-free website atlaunch - No matter how much you test a website, issues will come up on thewebsite when you are ready to launch it. It is better to launch a website whenyou have covered the majority of issues and there are no major functionalproblems on the website. If you are expecting heavy traffic on the websiteimmediately after the launch, plan your website launch so that traffic buildsup slowly and you can work on fixing residual issues or bugs while the initialset of users are on the website. Consider planning a Beta launch with a restrictedset of users who know that they might encounter some issues on the website.Keep reviewing the website after the launch and get the updates done to fix anyissues.

6.  Getting the website completed in shortest spanof time - Do not expect or plan to get your website done overnight. Websitedevelopment is an involved and iterative process. From conceptualization tofinal launch, it takes a good amount of time for each step.

You can minimize the time byworking with a project plan, tight set of requirements, and engagingaggressively with the development team. If you attempt to compress the time ittakes for each step, you will end up stressed out and with a poor quality siteon top of it.

The development and launch of yourwebsite is only a small part of a successful web presence. The post- launchprocess is actually much more critical, and time consuming as well.