WordCamp Philly 2011 - put your business on the web

What you need to know to put your

business on the web

Owen Winkler

Owner/Architect Critical Hit, LLC

18 years of development experience

Emeritus WordPress core developer

Twitter: @ringmaster Owen@criticalhit.us

Who The Heck Are You People?

Business owners

Responsible employees

Ambitious developer/designer

WordCamp organizers looking to keep me honest

Today's Goals

Save me aggravation

Save you time and money

Make everyone happy!

Everything except WordPress!

We do this by talking about...

Topic Outline

Your Site Idea

Technical Services Required

Hiring Contractors

Making Your Site Run Smoothly

Technical warning!

Your Site IdeaI already think it sucks, but I won't tell you that

What you need to have in mind

Who will use your site?

What will your visitors expect to find there?

What do you want to tell your visitors?

What is the look you're going for?

What other sites are like yours?

Paper Prototypes & Wireframes

Here's where things break!

You hired a designer, didn't you?

Web Design Disciplines

User Interface

Information Architecture

User Experience

Graphic Design

Technical Services Required To Start

Click here to buy now!

Technical Services Required To Start

Domain Names

Email

Web Hosting

Domain Registration

Your "dot com" and then some

Contact info

Costs $10-ish

Registration is not hosting

DNS Hosting

Domain Name Service

Root servers and caching

SPF records

Root Servers

Authoritative

ISP

Email

Email sucks, dude.

Hosting

Spam

Opt-in lists

Web Hosting

Features/Stack

Storage

Speed

Bandwidth

Low-level access

Security

Reliability

Price

Support availability

Criteria to look for

Web Hosting

Generally Cheaper

Quick support

Shares resources

Overselling

Scales Well

Seamless relocation

Integrated VPN

Support?

Server Maintenance

Shared Cloud

Web Hosting

All yours -resources

All yours - software

All yours - hardware

Scales Well

Monitored/maintained

Higher price

Usually only file-level access

Dedicated Hosted WP

Beware!!

You get what you pay for

Separate responsibility if possible

Ask for recommendations!

Hiring ContractorsHaharder sites are hard!

Contractors

On-demand, one and done

High expertise, short contract

Hard to assess ability

Contractor Rates

$60-$200 per hour

Fixed pricing per project

Contractor Caveats

Do not accept "canned" solutions

Best tool & coder for job

Contractor must ask good questions!

Should be honest about capabilities

May up-sell services

Contractor Caveats

You have the "business knowledge"

Commit to the solution for your budget

Set milestones, not deadlines

Be responsive; answer questions

Tons of other stuff...

Where do I find a decent contractor?

WordCamp attendees/presenters

PANMA

eLance

WordPress mailing lists

WordPress meetup

Hiring a Developer

Ask for code samples

Corporate culture fit

You must be out of your mind

Bootstrapping!

Making Your Site Run SmoothlyOh, you've only just begun...

Stuff you should have thought about while you were waiting to receive

your site mockup!

Content

SEO

Analytics

Backups

Maintenance

Spiral marketing

Spiral MarketingSay what now?

Build it and...

Search Engine Optimization

Analytics

Put that thang in reverse and...

Database

Files

Configuration

Maintenance

Owen WinklerTwitter: @ringmaster Owen@criticalhit.us