The first two stages happen in parallel:
Site Design
The Site Design stage progressively refines the look-and-feel of your website, usually by iterating in images of the home page. The images show how the whole page of your website will appear, including: logo, images, navigation, colors. The best way you can prepare for this stage is to make notes of what you do and do not like about other sites. You can look at the other Kaivo state sites by following the links on the Kaivo TIG Portal. Graphics impressions can come from other sites, too.
Basic Structure
The basic structure of your site will be a combination of OST components (e.g., document library, events calendar, news, etc.) and static content (usually html pages). We'll begin this stage by doing a virtual tour - talking through what you want on your new site. If you already have a website, this is often a good starting point because we can discuss where you want the content you already have. Based on the virtual tour, we'll put together the skeleton of your website, usually doing the public side first and then moving on to the private/advocate side.
Custom Work
While discussing the basic structure of your website, we will note deviations between what you want and how the OST functions. Some customizations are expected and included within the price of the OST. If any single customization or the total volume of customizations exceeds what's included with the OST, we will let you know. Many customizations will be handled during the Basic Structure phase. For customizations that require additional development work, we will give you an estimate of when that part of the site will be done.
Beginning Content
When the site is mostly built (there may be outstanding customizations) we provide phone training (typically 1-2 hours) for the content administrator of your website. Then we support (usually via email) the admin while they begin loading content. Although content is the biggest, most important part of your website, it is not necessary to load all content before moving on to the next stage.
Live Site and Ongoing Support
When the admin is comfortable with the basic functioning of the site (and this is subjective) we "take the website live", which means we move it to a production server and map your domain name to the new website. Now it is accessible by anyone on the internet. As you continue to load new content and manage existing content, it's normal for questions to arise and even to identify new needs. We continue to support these issues (again, usually via email) when the site is live. If support needs exceed what we can accomodate with the hosting fee (e.g., you identify a whole new section that you need for the website), then we'll discuss additional funding.
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