Web Hosting and Design

[N. A. Corbier]

I know that several regular users have asked about website design, website hosting, and graphics services.

So, I figured I'd say a few things, for those of you wondering.

1. We've just got our first server. Our own server, not shared hosting. This means we can host more than websites, such as VoIP systems (Asterisk/Trixbox/Etc), specialized application services (Tomcat, etc), and other programs.

2. We're offering some limited time specials. I'll go into these and explain what they're about.

The first is hosting for 40 dollars a year. You'll get 5 GB of drive space, unlimited domains, unlimited subdomains, unlimited databases (PostgreSQL or MySQL), unlimited email addresses, 25 GB of bandwidth.

I know a lot of you are seeing "500 GB of drive space, 1 TB of bandwidth for 3.99 a month." I suggest that you google something called "oversell," which is where the company says you get X, and when you approach Y, your account is terminated for "account violations."

Accounts will have the Plesk web management system, which will allow you to do things like setup email addresses, etc.

Other services will be offered on a case by case basis.

3. For 300 dollars, we're offering a custom site design package. This includes a year of hosting on our servers, copyediting services (I'll talk about that more below), graphics design, coding of pages, and maintenance for 6 months. This package includes 10 pages.

Most web design firms want you to send them the text for every page. This means that you get to write your website, and they will "code" it. We are offering copyediting and copywriting services with this package. You give us information, and we'll write content for you.

These are our packages so far. This is a limited time offer, so you can:

a) email sales at cityscapesolutions.net

b) Private Message me.

c) Visit Cityscape Solutions at our website, cityscapesolutions.net, for more info.

[publicsafetyred]

For what its worth, N. A. Corbier has been posting on this forum for quite some time and everything that I know of Cityscape Solutions has been good and professional.

[Secure Permagrin]

a friend of mine offers excellent webdesign in Utica, NY (http://www.jsdesignonline.com/webdesign.html) you can check out his website I think he has a few sits there and we've hired him a couple times to do some work for us.

He is also really getting into SEO and he is one of the only SEO Search Engine Optimization Companies in Utica, NY (http://www.jsdesignonline.com/). I know a lot of you are not from the Utica area, but JS Design has clients all over and with the Internet and high speed transmissions there is not much they can't do remotely.

They are real good with smaller businesses and really have great ideas for marketing strategies to.

[SecTrainer]

a friend of mine offers excellent webdesign in Utica, NY (http://www.jsdesignonline.com/webdesign.html) you can check out his website I think he has a few sits there and we've hired him a couple times to do some work for us.

He is also really getting into SEO and he is one of the only SEO Search Engine Optimization Companies in Utica, NY (http://www.jsdesignonline.com/). I know a lot of you are not from the Utica area, but JS Design has clients all over and with the Internet and high speed transmissions there is not much they can't do remotely.

They are real good with smaller businesses and really have great ideas for marketing strategies to.

With due respect, SP, it's hard to take an outfit that touts high-quality design seriously with all the errors on the relatively brief page you linked up in your post, specifically:

1. Redundancy: "...who all collaborate..." - collaboration implies all, so should just be "who collaborate...".

2. Inappropriate use of uppercase in the middle of a sentence: "...Logos, Printed material and Websites" should not be capitalized - or at least they should have been consistent and made it "Printed Material".

3. Inability to differentiate between the plural and possessive form of a noun: ..."agency's" should have been "agencies". This is a grade-school grammatical gaffe.

Not too impressive for someone wanting to sell their design expertise, I'm afraid. I didn't bother to look at the rest of the site when I saw this.

...perhaps these "design experts" should consult, ummmm...some real design experts.

[N. A. Corbier]

For anyone wondering, we're going through a domain registrar change after our last registrar failed to support our needs in the most spectacular way possible. They changed our DNS nameservers to point to... themselves.

[Secure Permagrin]

or maybe they just need to have someone proofread the copy on that webpage. It's my thought that designers focus more on design than copy.

Their designs are great thought, and i bet it would be easy for them to make any copy changes.

We are talking about design right, and not copy writing.

They could hire a school teacher to make corrections to their copy but they cant hire a better designer.

by the way who really cares about well written internet copy, everyone is writing LOL and LMFAO BRB, the world is undergoing some change.

Thanks for pointing all the errors out though. That must have been fun for you to proof read the site.


With due respect, SP, it's hard to take an outfit that touts high-quality design seriously with all the errors on the relatively brief page you linked up in your post, specifically:

1. Redundancy: "...who all collaborate..." - collaboration implies all, so should just be "who collaborate...".

2. Inappropriate use of uppercase in the middle of a sentence: "...Logos, Printed material and Websites" should not be capitalized - or at least they should have been consistent and made it "Printed Material".

3. Inability to differentiate between the plural and possessive form of a noun: ..."agency's" should have been "agencies". This is a grade-school grammatical gaffe.

Not too impressive for someone wanting to sell their design expertise, I'm afraid. I didn't bother to look at the rest of the site when I saw this.

...perhaps these "design experts" should consult, ummmm...some real design experts.

[N. A. Corbier]

...

That is the most juvenile answer I have heard in a long, long time. "OMG txt is prevalent in teh intarwebs, so speeling doesn't mattar!" That excuse doesn't fly.

That reminds me of a 17 year old kid who is a "website designer." Supposedly, people buy "design services" from him. They get a .psd file. A photoshop layout of the blank page backgrounds.

When people buy website design services, they are looking for start to finish. And copyediting and copywriting is a large portion of that. Adults still judge companies by looking at their marketing materials. Flagrant errors in them usually mean that there will be errors and omissions in other things, as well.

I got bored, and looked at the site. HTML 4.01, no CSS, and it looks like it was written in the late 1990s, or they used someone else's template. Tables everywhere...

[BadBoynMD]

...

That is the most juvenile answer I have heard in a long, long time. "OMG txt is prevalent in teh intarwebs, so speeling doesn't mattar!" That excuse doesn't fly.

That reminds me of a 17 year old kid who is a "website designer." Supposedly, people buy "design services" from him. They get a .psd file. A photoshop layout of the blank page backgrounds.

When people buy website design services, they are looking for start to finish. And copyediting and copywriting is a large portion of that. Adults still judge companies by looking at their marketing materials. Flagrant errors in them usually mean that there will be errors and omissions in other things, as well.

I got bored, and looked at the site. HTML 4.01, no CSS, and it looks like it was written in the late 1990s, or they used someone else's template. Tables everywhere...

Nathan, I couldn't agree more. I couldn't get passed the first paragraph without shaking my head. You know, if I paid someone to do my site, and it turned out looking like this "designer's page" i'd be more than pissed.

[Bill Warnock]

Nathan, I couldn't agree more. I couldn't get passed the first paragraph without shaking my head. You know, if I paid someone to do my site, and it turned out looking like this "designer's page" i'd be more than pissed.
BadBoyn figure it this way, limited budget and worst of all, limited intellect.
Enjoy the day,
Bill

[BadBoynMD]

BadBoyn figure it this way, limited budget and worst of all, limited intellect.
Enjoy the day,
Bill

Bill, more and more everyday I am convinced, that this world is going to hell in a hand-basket.

I seen a ad for security officer's on Craig's List, and I tell you I couldn't stop reading it over to make sure I didn't miss anything. www.marylandsecurity.net

[SecTrainer]

It's my thought that designers focus more on design than copy.

You thought wrong.


Their designs are great thought.

I presume you mean "though", because I certainly saw no evidence of "thought" to their own website design.


They could hire a school teacher to make corrections to their copy but they cant hire a better designer.

Or, they could hire anyone out of kindergarten to do both, and do them better.


by the way who really cares about well written internet copy, everyone is writing LOL and LMFAO BRB, the world is undergoing some change.

You're confusing instant messaging with what clients and potential clients look for in a business website. There are a million marketing studies on the importance of both copy and design, and you would do yourself a favor to avail yourself of those findings, especially if you are responsible for a business website.


That must have been fun for you to proof read the site.

It's "proofread", incidentally, just so you won't feel left out. And, it had nothing to do with "fun"...I went there with a completely open mind to see what feast for the eye these geniuses had prepared. Given what you had said about them, I was genuinely disappointed to find no feast...just another run-of-the-mill turd-on-a-stick that passes for Web content at low-level sites - like "My Personal Pages" on MySpace - these days. I couldn't for the life of me figure out what there was to recommend these people by way of design, content or any website technology employed. The page wouldn't have taken a complete HTML (!) novice more than 20 minutes to throw together.

And now a more personal note. I'm personally growing tired of you using this forum for the obvious sole purpose of hawking something, whether your own products or someone else's.

[N. A. Corbier]

This reminds me, I need to throw the siwchat script up again. Just for giggles, I might go through the secureforce website, again, and fix _all_ the validation errors, down the & instead of &

[N. A. Corbier]

Bill, more and more everyday I am convinced, that this world is going to hell in a hand-basket.

I seen a ad for security officer's on Craig's List, and I tell you I couldn't stop reading it over to make sure I didn't miss anything. www.marylandsecurity.net

Oh my. Badly done LCARS interface, image with rect maps because they couldn't figure out how to do the LCARS interface in CSS, it doesn't even line up...

They get points for using XHTML 1.0 Transitional, though.

I did love ALL POLICE ALL THE TIME!

[Secure Permagrin]

You thought wrong.



I presume you mean "though", because I certainly saw no evidence of "thought" to their own website design.



Or, they could hire anyone out of kindergarten to do both, and do them better.

.

You're confusing instant messaging with what clients and potential clients look for in a business website. There are a million marketing studies on the importance of both copy and design, and you would do yourself a favor to avail yourself of those findings, especially if you are responsible for a business website.



It's "proofread", incidentally, just so you won't feel left out. And, it had nothing to do with "fun"...I went there with a completely open mind to see what feast for the eye these geniuses had prepared. Given what you had said about them, I was genuinely disappointed to find no feast...just another run-of-the-mill turd-on-a-stick that passes for Web content at low-level sites - like "My Personal Pages" on MySpace - these days. I couldn't for the life of me figure out what there was to recommend these people by way of design, content or any website technology employed. The page wouldn't have taken a complete HTML (!) novice more than 20 minutes to throw together.

And now a more personal note. I'm personally growing tired of you using this forum for the obvious sole purpose of hawking something, whether your own products or someone else's.

Since you like bashing peoples websites look at N. A. Corbier's site. I went there and was not impressed by anything. The designs are old school, the content is dull and nothing original. Even the logo doesn't work. its to small and has no branding appeal to it. I compared the two sites and the one i recommended gets a higher page rank that N. A. Corbier's.

We are in a web 2.0 world buddy. stuff on the internerd gets misspelled and the copy isn't always PeRFect. There is a lot more change coming your way. better get on board and stop being such a hater. Why don't you go and review N. A. Corbier's site and tell the group your opinion of that. Would you trust his company before JS design? Are the designs the best you've ever seen, does his website or portfolio "WOW" you? Is everything ok with his copy?

I do expect some sort of response from you here. Because you are the authority on what is good and what is bad on the internet, are you not?

By the way if you're so into advertising and design how come you are a Security Trainer and you're not making a ton of money out on Madison Avenue?

Oh and why don't you post a link to your website, I'll let you know what I think of it.

I'm guessing it wont compare to either of the 2.

sorry N. A. Corbier I am sure you offer a great service, it's to bad that SecTrainer had to ruin the fun with his awful negativity, and old fashioned outlook.

[N. A. Corbier]

Oh ffs.

"Web 2.0" is an over-used and over-hyped buzzword without substance. It has nothing to do with spelling mistakes and txt or emoticons. This is a classic example of someone applying a buzzword without understanding its meaning.

If anything, "Web 2.0" means collaboration. User driven content. Technologies that enable users to share information in an easy and streamlined manner.

These technologies include AJAX, which allows for pages that do not need to be refreshed. A good example of AJAX is the Google Mail interface. Another excellent "Web 2.0" application is meebo, an instant messenger client that operates on the Software as a Service platform.

"Web 2.0," on the vaunted "design" side, is about gradients, transparencies, shiny buttons, checkered borders and glass effects.

"Web 2.0" has nothing to do with TXT, AOLSpeek, or the simple fact that some people are too lazy to type correctly. If anyone here believes that anything short of Business English is acceptable for marketing or promotional materials in the security integrator or guard services, they are gravely mistaken.

When the uneducated attempt to hold discourse on subjects they barely understand and spout buzzwords such as "web 2.0" while completely mangling the concept behind it, it casts a negative image on the firm the represent.

[N. A. Corbier]

For those of you wondering (Maybe one or two...)

Tim O'Reilly, who coined the term Web 2.0 (It was the name... of a web conference!), has a few things to say about what Web 2.0 is and isn't.



Web 2.0 started out as the name of a conference! And that name had a very specific purpose: to signify that the web was roaring back after the dot com bust! The 2.0 bit wasn't about the technology, but about the resurgence of interest in the web. When we came up with the idea back in 2003, a lot of programmers were out of work, and there was a general lack of interest in web applications. But we saw a resurgence coming, and designed a conference to tell the story of what was going to be different this time.


Many people like to define it, and while a definition was agreed upon (for now), all should remember what the man who created the term believes it to be.

[SecTrainer]

For those of you wondering (Maybe one or two...)

Tim O'Reilly, who coined the term Web 2.0 (It was the name... of a web conference!), has a few things to say about what Web 2.0 is and isn't.



Many people like to define it, and while a definition was agreed upon (for now), all should remember what the man who created the term believes it to be.

However, the term has taken on a life of its own now, and even O'Reilly, among others, no longer "believes the term to be" merely the name of the conference. In fact, he is one of the significant leaders who has developed the definition as it is now, laying down what he considers to be the basic criteria for "Web 2.0".

"Web 2.0" is a fairly clear and even simple concept, although the mind-boggling number of possible expressions of Web 2.0 might make it seem otherwise. At its most basic level, Web 2.0 is simply "the old Web" in its next iteration, i.e. implemented not as a mere respository and delivery system for information, but as an open, ubiquitous platform whereby applications, services and data are enabled in the global domain on the Web, and are accessible to any system that has and can run its own version of a standard interface client (such as a web browser, standard FTP, SIP or Telnet client, etc.).

Ideally, then, the "OS/hardware platform" of the user becomes irrelevant. Web 2.0 applications, services and data should be indifferent to whether the client using them is running on Linux, Windows or any other OS, or whether it's a PC, MAC or Sun workstation, so long as the client on the system follows the expected access/transport/session (usually, IP) protocols.

Open data standards, similarly, mean that it no longer matters whether the user happens to have Microsoft Access or MySQL (or neither!) installed on his system.

As someone who has lived with the tyranny of "brand-relatedness" in the computer world since the days of DOS 3.0, whereby you had to be "a Microsoft person" or "an Apple person"...and subsequently "a Linux person"...and restricted to whatever your "brand family" of vendors made available, Web 2.0 is transformational. Suddenly, in the ideal Web 2.0 world, it doesn't matter what "family" I belong to - we're all one big happy family.

...and it's not a pipe dream. It really works. O'Reilly himself listed some very successful examples: eBay, Skype, Wikipedia, craigslist and Adsense. Google Docs and Officezilla are further examples of the Web 2.0 concept at what O'Reilly calls "Level 3" - applications implemented entirely by the Internet and deriving their power from popular collaboration. Since his examples, others have appeared, such as the Zoho collaboration and "office" suite.

"Web 2.0", as you say, was originally the name of a conference discussing the future of the Internet, but it is a term with its own independent meaning now...sort of like "Kleenex".

[Secure Permagrin]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE

[davis002]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE

Interesting video, yet it does not prove a single point you tried to make.

[N. A. Corbier]

... So, who here got the professor's message?

[hrdickinson]

N.A., I've seen your work and it is great! Plus, you deserve to be on the main page in the Vendor's forum!!

[N. A. Corbier]

Thank you. :)

We've just added another client, and are still running our special of 35 for the first year of hosting, and 200 dollars buying you a website.

I really need to update the "portfolio" page.

[NRM_Oz]

Ironic how first impressions count and when I have been an interviewer I have looked at how someone presents their resume` and collective documents. My person had a great presentation until I noticed he had spelt his name incorrectly all the way through (it was a paid resume` design) which I noticed immediately. We completed the interview with the panel and I kindly pointed it out to him and assured him it did not affect his chances.

A sales person goes in for a presentation and you find spelling mistakes or alternate words used that proves that proof-reading was not completed before final presentation. In a cut throat environment such as our industry you are going to consider another company - especially when you have UNDER CONSTRUCTION on a web site for months.

N.A - your site looks great