Cost effective development process
We're not the guys who will stuff your content in a pre-made template for £500. We don't do mass-produced shortcuts. You may well ask, if we don't do cheap and cheerful, how can we claim to be cost-effective?
We charge for building the website basics properly, which in turn means the long-term costs are lower.
We take care to separate format from content using CSS. You can change the entire look of an Ideadesigners-developed website several times during its lifetime usually with changes to the CSS alone. We structure HTML such that the website pages are inherently search-engine friendly.
We include a Content Management System (CMS). As your business environment changes, so can your staff change the contents of your website.
We build to W3C web standards. This sounds boring, but it means that whatever new browsers, or hand-helds, or whatever devices come along, the website will still display accurately. (That's one of the reasons why W3C publish the standards.)
Finally, we don't re-invent the wheel, because we use our Topaz framework, which provides a Rapid Application Development environment. Topaz enables us to build and re-use fundamental website components very quickly, as well as facilitating the custom-development of tailor made functions.
Doing something well doesn't have to take more time than doing it wrong.
Technically:
- We base websites on object-oriented PHP framework which provides database access, template engine, web services API.
- We implement websites using CSS with HTML Strict or XHTML, usually via XSLT templates and our custom CSS preprocessor.
