Island Design Works

I’d love it if every potential client could afford a full-blown web site development project. Truth is there are lots of organizations with very limited budgets. With old communication media — Print, TV, radio — smaller clients are usually out of luck or short-changed. That’s often been the case with web sites too, even though it doesn’t have to be. I’m convinced that there’s no reason for people with very small budgets to not have a site that meets the following criteria:

1. easy to maintain and revise without specialized training;
2. search engine friendly;
3. accessibility friendly;
4. attractive;
5. affordable.

Blogging for business

The development of open-source, free-to-use blogging software (web logs or journals) has opened the door to everyone to low cost, but effective content management systems (CMS). A CMS allows you to combine a templating system with a database to deliver a web site that can be maintained by the client and without any specialized technical training. Good blogging tools are easy to use as content management systems and will allow you to build and manage your entire web site.

The best of the blogging software choices produce web pages that are search engine friendly as well as accessible to viewers with various vision challenges. There’s also very little you can do to break the site. Finally, even the smallest budget can afford to use this software as not only is it free, but there are significant libraries of free-to-use templates available.

Sure, I’d rather design the whole works for you, but that’s just not going to be possible with the smallest budgets. I’d rather work a few hours for you setting up a blog and teaching you how to make it work, than see you have no web presence or a inadequate one. With luck, some day you will be able to support a full-scale project.

Some examples

Island Design Works is a small business, too, so it’s not difficult to recognize the importance of providing a helpful service to start-ups.

Hot Yoga
Hot Yoga Kingston is a yoga studio in downtown Kingston. They had a design concept, but were unclear on how to build the site and manage it. IDW took their concept, built Wordpress templates, installed the software, and trained them to update and add pages themselves.

Rick Downes for mayor
A candidate for mayor of Kingston, Rick’s campaign didn’t have the budget or time for full-out web site development. Instead, we installed Wordpress and an open-source theme (changing the banner photo to localize it) and let his volunteers go to work. The site is active and vibrant — allowing him to enhance his message without needing a second mortgage on his home.

Kristen Ritchie Photographer
Kristen’s site combines Pixel Post and Wordpress to provide her with a promotional web site as well as a private web site for clients’ to view their photos. Her business is in the earliest stages of start-up and specializes in pet photography. I’m really taken with the quality of her work.