The Design Process

Building attractive, healthy websites involves two distinct design stages. First, we create the basic look and feel of a page, deciding on the use of logo or other banner art, choice of colors and fonts, placement of graphics, and style and placement of site navigation. For the most part, this stage follows basic design principles known to graphic artists for years.

Then we do the computer-coding. This is where we tell web browsers how to render pages, and the user experience will vary widely depending on how clean and up-to-date we write the code. These design principles are so new and fast-evolving that any site design that's more than a couple years old is seriously behind the times.

33 WebStreet can:

  • create a site from scratch;
  • start with a logo, image, or other client-provided design element and build the site around it;
  • take a client-provided full page graphic design and convert it to valid computer code;
  • or take a pre-existing site and bring its code up to date, while leaving the page look and feel as is.

Let 33 WebStreet build you a healthy website. Contact us now!

Domain Names and Web Hosts

All websites begin with a Domain Name. Domains must be registered with a legal "name registrar" who makes sure that no one else can use that name, and who connects the name to your web host. If you're only planning on a single website, then the web host can usually serve as name registrar also. If you decide to register multiple names then we recommend that you always use the same registrar.

We use directNIC for our domain registrations. They have an easy-to-use interface for discovering if the name you want is available. They charge a reasonable $15 p/yr and, most important, they send multiple notifications when your name is due to expire.

Whatever registrar you use, be sure to retain a record of your user name and password for the account — you will need it to renew the registration and to set up your web host.

Your web host is the computer server where all the site files reside. Though any computer can serve as a web host, a good host offers an array of important services and features, including easy installation of current web applications, email service, and solid security, all at a reasonable price.

Most of our sites are hosted by DreamHost, a great company that we highly recommend. Here's a quick tutorial on setting up an account at DreamHost.

Search Engine Optimization

Back in the day, getting high rankings on Google and other search engines was a mysterious and ever-changing process. The complexity spawned a whole industry — Search Engine Optimization, or SEO — guaranteed to keep a website owner's inbox full of offers from SEO experts who knew all the latest tricks to get your site a number one ranking.

At 33 WebStreet we take our guidance from the source — Google. We are, in fact, unabashed Google lovers because they do so much to make a web developer's job easier. In addition to a number of solid developer tools, they tell us exactly how to optimize sites for best search results:


All of Google's advice comes down to two main points: first, write clean, well-organized code; second, fill your site with well-written, relevant, and up-to-date content.

While any good web developer should be able to handle the first part, the second — the content — is usually the responsibility of the site owner. When you're providing information, goods, and/or services that the world really wants, then your website naturally makes its way toward the top of search pages.

Using WordPress

WordPress is a powerful Content Management System (CMS) that 33 WebStreet uses for most of its sites. It is free, open-source software, with a huge developer community, which means that it is always on the cutting-edge and constantly improving.

We use WordPress because

  • it is the best way we know to include a blog on a site
  • there are thousands of plugins for every conceivable purpose, including shopping carts, newsletters, rss feeds, contact forms, and the latest in social networking tools
  • it makes it easy for our clients — even the computer-challenged — to publish and edit their content, without having to worry about messing with computer code.


If you're the owner of a WordPress site, when you want to add, edit, or remove content, you simply go online, log in to the admin pages, and work with an interface much like a word processor. When you're ready to go, you click on Publish and — ta-da, you're a published author. You can do this from any computer, operating system, and browser, anywhere in the world.

WordPress offers plenty of documentation and tutorials and if you google "WordPress tutorials" you'll find hundreds more. WordPress also offers free, hosted blogs which are more than adequate for many people. However, the free-hosted version does not allow you to use your own domain name, nor to tinker with the code.

Continuing Site Maintainance

Once your site is up, there are long-term management issues, starting with the need to keep current with domain name and webhosting fees and to deal with any server problems. Most sites also need regular content updates, from changing a date or a price to adding whole new pages. Healthy sites will also tend to add new features as they go along, and every few years a major design overhaul may be needed.

Even with WordPress installed, many clients find it easier to let us do updates and changes. We typically post changes to a page within 48 hours of a request, often within minutes for urgent matters.

Any site that is left unchanged for too long will lose its high search ranking, will see a reduction in users, and most of those who do visit will leave the site the moment they see out-of-date information. If you are seriously committed to maintaining a healthy website you must keep all of your content current, while adding new content as often as possible.

33 WebStreet can help with all of your long-term web development needs. Check out our portfolio to see some of our sites in action.

Ready to start building your site? Contact us today!