Finding a good webmaster

Posted in: Blog, Web Design, Wordpress by MauiHawaiiUpdates on February 11, 2012 | No Comments

We have people come to us regularly and ask us if they’re getting a good deal with their potential web designer. Since we take very few clients, we can give unbiased opinions about whether the proposal looks good or not. Here is a pretty classic proposal that we recently were asked to check out.

“I can definitely do a site like this, I can offer a custom professional 5 page website, hosting and the domain name paid for one year, Paypal and payment integration. I can complete it within 1 to 4 weeks depending on how smoothly everything goes. It would run around $800 I would need half upfront, If you didn’t want the payment integrated in the site then I would be able to do it for $600. Let me know if you’re still interested.”

1st off, that price is cheap. cheap is good and bad. Good cause you spend less, bad cause you don’t know what you’re gonna get. At the same time, an expensive web designer can do just as bad a job as a cheap one (yes, I’ve not helped you AT ALL.)

Ok, so if he pays for your domain and hosting for a year, MAKE SURE IT’S ALL IN YOUR NAME!! That means, have the domain registered in your name, and have the hosting account in your name. Why? I wrote an article on website hijacking to better explain it.
Honestly, I think most people can handle the task of registering a domain name and signing up for a hosting account themselves. If you’re not comfortable with this, have your webmaster do it with no uncertain terms about whose name is associated with the account. ALSO, make sure to get the user and pass codes to get into the account(s).

Make sure to see his previous examples of work. Also, it’s best to have a designer that you either know, or you know where they live/work (in case they disappear with your deposit. A very common thing. Webmasters can be slimy bastards.)

Before you pay a dime, I would make sure you have the following put together:

• A basic idea of what you want for your layout and navigation (see other sites you like.)
• All the written content you need for the 5 pages.
• All the images you want for the 5 pages.

The reason you need this upfront is because:

1. If you pay, and lag for 2 years on getting your designer the stuff he needs, he may not be around anymore.
2. If you can’t get that material together, then there’s no point in having a site. (I know you think this is easy, but the reason I don’t build sites for clients anymore is because this happened so many times. I’ve waited 3 years after beginning a project, put loads of work into it, and never had the site complete for my final payment. Waste of time for everyone.)

For the most control of your content, and the most design control, I suggest looking into WordPress. You can look around online for free or paid themes that you like (which can be implemented VERY easily without changes).

With WordPress, you can make changes to the content yourself. The only problem with WordPress is that it’s not as secure as hand-coded sites. I’ve been hacked and lost some material I didn’t back up. Not fun. It may require maintenance by your webmaster to keep the site updated/upgraded and secure at all times. See my article on WordPress Security.

Hope that helps. If you find the right webmaster, life can be very good and easy. The hard part is find a webmaster you can trust, a webmaster that works hard and in a timely manner, a webmaster that is good (at coding, SEO, and graphic design), and a webmaster that doesn’t charge you unnecessarily.

HWG State of the Group

Posted in: Blog, Graphic Design, Hawaii Videos, Maui, SEO, Social Media, Testimonials, Twitter, Web Design by MauiHawaiiUpdates on February 4, 2012 | No Comments

Here at Hawaii Web Group, we believe in being transparent.  This is why we’ve decided to issue a yearly “State of the Group” to let our clients and our ohana know where we stand.  See Previous State of the Group.

2011 HWG Traffic

After reviewing our analytics in 2011, we’ve found that our small network of Maui/Hawaii websites (owned and operated by HWG) brought in the following traffic relative to previous years.  All of the numbers below come from Google Analytics.  (If anyone shows you numbers for their sites that are derived from some other analytic program, be wary!  We only trust Google for this.)

Increase in traffic

In the last 31 days, our websites have increased in traffic by over 47% across the board.

In February of 2013, you can expect a similar report.  On this new report, you’ll find that the numbers above will have increased substantially.  Our goal is to grow by around 50% every year for the next 5 years.  Our goal is to market our islands while maintaining an educational emphasis.  We want our visitors to leave with more than just a tan.  We want them to leave with a better understanding of the unique culture and environment that we love on the islands.

New websites built in 2011

MauiWebCameras.com – This site shares the webcameras of Maui by area of the island.

In 2011, we concentrated on building up our social profiles and growing our blogging community.  We also did a few side projects for clients: Haleakala Bike Company and Auntie Snorkel.  We also began building a website about Molokini, which is still in progress.

The Social Web

In 2011, we’ve been extra busy socially on the web.  We’ve built 2 new social blogs and we’ve been diligent with Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Foursquare, and more.  Below are some of our growing numbers.

Outsourcing

We still have yet to hire anyone not on the island of Maui.  All of our independent contractors reside and work on the island of Maui, Hawaii.  We believe its important to keep jobs within our own State.

Overview

All in all, we’re very happy with what our efforts have produced in 2011.  It’s been more work than we’d ever imagined, but the feedback from our clients and our increased numbers above make us feel like it’s all worth it.  How do we do it? The old fashioned way with a lot of HARD WORK. We believe that nothing worthwhile comes from shortcuts. We build the best content possible and focus on our visitors. If they’re not happy with what we give them, the page (or site) will come down. Overall, we want our impact on the web to be positive in a way where our visitors appreciate the work we’ve done and share it with friends.

We’re looking forward to sharing our numbers again in 2013!

Maui Web Design

Posted in: Blog, Graphic Design, Maui, SEO, Web Design by MauiHawaiiUpdates on October 1, 2011 | No Comments

We’re building websites for clients again! We know, it sounds strange that at one point we had even stopped.  I’ll explain:  We took a short hiatus from designing websites for clients in order to concentrate on our own network of Hawaii websites.

Now we’re back and building!  Our goal is to build no more than 6 websites per year.  because of our detailed methods involved in designing, we can’t take as many clients as we’d like.  Below we’ve listed a few prerequisites required of our clients.

1. Flexibility – This is very important.  Hawaii Web Group builds websites for local businesses in order for them to grow their exposure and brand.  Ultimately, the website has to help the business become more popular and increase their sales.

This means that we have to have the final say in design.  Again, this sounds strange.  You know your business, but we know the web.  If you want someone to build a site exactly as you want, we recommend you find different designers.  We’ll do everything in our power to make your site look the way you want, but some things shouldn’t be done if you want to reach the largest amount of your ideal visitors.   You have to trust us.

2. Content – You know your business better than we do.  We need you to write the content for your pages before we even start.  This point will make or break a business relationship.  Right off the bat, I can tell you that most people we deal with are amped to begin the project and ready to pay, but they’ll never get us the materials we need.  This kills the project. We can make things up for your business, but it won’t be entirely accurate, it will take longer to write and fix mistakes, and it will cost you more for us to write it.

3. Commitment – Once you’ve decided to go with us, you need to be committed 100%.  When we need your input, you’ll need to give it to us in a timely manner. That means getting us answers within hours, not days.

I know this sounds strange to have prerequisites for clients, but we have high standards for what we build, and it takes time.  If we’re going to build, we’re going to do it right!  Give us a shout!

CS5 Photoshop Tutorial

Posted in: Blog, Graphic Design, Hawaii Videos, Web Design by MauiHawaiiUpdates on April 5, 2011 | No Comments

Here we’ve made a tutorial of a new logo Hawaii Web Group built for a new surf/skate shop opening up on Newport Blvd. in Southern California.  The logo will be featured on the homepage of Newport Surf until the new site is completed.

Video Transcription

Aloha and welcome to Hawaii Web Group‘s CS5 Photoshop tutorial.  This is a sped up version of a logo design for a new surf and skate shop on Newport Blvd  in California for Newportsurf.com. Here you can see us using the 3D text tool where we’re tweaking position, perspective, and adding spotlights. To do this, you have to go to 3D, Repousse, and then Text Layer. If it won’t let you because it says you have a faux bold text, go ahead and select the text with your text tool, and then right click and then toggle off the faux bold. When you do finally render the text for spotlighting and shadowing, make sure you have a lot of time because it takes a while.

Here we’re extending the background because we don’t have enough room, and we’re positioning the words to fit better and look like they’re kind of sitting on top of eachother.

What we’re gonna do is fill in each letter, so we’re not really interested in what the front face looks like other than having it be clean and white.  There’s a lot of different ways to do anything in Photoshop.  And here we’re using it for the web so we’re not too concerned about the high high quality you might need to print something. Read more…

HWG State Of The Group

Posted in: Blog, Graphic Design, Hawaii Videos, Maui, SEO, Social Media, Twitter, Web Design by MauiHawaiiUpdates on February 3, 2011 | No Comments

Here at Hawaii Web Group, we believe in being transparent.  This is why we’ve decided to issue a yearly “State of the Group” to let our clients and our ohana know where we stand.

2010 HWG Traffic

After reviewing our analytics in 2010, we’ve found that our small network of Maui/Hawaii websites (owned and operated by HWG) brought in the following traffic.  All of the numbers below come from Google Analytics.  (If anyone shows you numbers for their sites that are derived from some other analytic program, be wary!  We only trust Google for this.)

Increase in traffic

In the last 31 days, our websites have increased in traffic by over 55.92% across the board. Read more…

Keeping Your WordPress Blog From Being Hacked

Posted in: Blog, Graphic Design, Web Design by MauiHawaiiUpdates on December 8, 2010 | No Comments

So, over the last 6 months, every WordPress blog I’ve set up has been hacked in one way or another. It sucks. I thought I was doing everything right, but apparently I didn’t do enough when it comes to security (you can never do enough!) The following are some of the things I did to help secure my sites from malicious evil bastards. Keep in mind that these things can help secure your site, but as far as we know there is no way to keep hackers 100% from getting into your site.  These measures merely make it harder for them, which will hopefully persuade them to move on to another WordPress Blog that isn’t as secure as yours. Read more…

WordPress Themes

Posted in: Blog, Graphic Design, Maui, Web Design by MauiHawaiiUpdates on | No Comments

I used to use free themes for my wordpress blogs. Some work well, others are riddled with problems (often, you get what you pay for.) The last one I used worked very well, but it had a broken link to their own development site in the footer of every page. Seriously? How does a theme company screw this up out of everything they could screw up? It was engineered to where I couldn’t easily fix it, plus, they wouldn’t let me reverse engineer anything due to copyright. Read more…

Keonekai Villages Maui

Posted in: All Sites, Available Ads, Blog, Hawaii Websites, Maui, Projects, Web Design by NORBERG on December 2, 2010 | No Comments

The Client: Owner of Keonekai Village unit

Project Description: One of the finest condominium complexes in south Maui, Keonekai Villages is located in a prime location next to the best beach park in Hawaii.  The property is well landscaped with beautiful units, many of which have great views of the ocean and the mountains.

This website has custom built maps, photos, video, and plenty of information on this complex.  We discuss sales and rentals and have info on the different areas around the condo.

Visit Website: Keonekai

Maui Maps

Posted in: All Sites, Available Ads, Blog, Graphic Design, Hawaii Videos, Hawaii Websites, Maui, Personal Favorites, Projects, Twitter, Web Design by NORBERG on November 15, 2010 | No Comments

The Client: Hawaii Web Group LLC

Project Description: This is one of our favorite websites ever made.  We think our visitors are going to love the Flash interactive map on the home page.  Each location and activity page has a Twitter feed for each subject, video, photos, local tips, and detailed information.

Feel free to poke around and enjoy the site.  We’ve spent a lot of time to make it great.  Mahalo!

Visit Website: Maui Map

Maui Sailing

Posted in: All Sites, Available Ads, Blog, Graphic Design, Hawaii Websites, Maui, Personal Favorites, Projects, Web Design by NORBERG on October 4, 2010 | No Comments

The Client: Hawaii Web Group LLC

Project Description: We used a premium domain name to secure a URL that can be identified as an authority for this particular activity.  The site has some custom-built maps of the harbors as well as photos, directions, information, and a list of the many sailing tours available on the island.  The site uses pure CSS and HTML.  We used really clean and lean code and we’ve featured some new additions that add to the overall fun of the site.  (We like that the sails are transparent!)

We plan on promoting this site and getting it to #1 for most all Maui Sailing keywords.

Visit Website: Maui Sailing