How The Dev Department Works

Prepare your site outline with descriptions of each page's content, layout and functionality. We call this a Functional Specifications (FS) document.

Heres an example of what it looks like:

• HOME PAGE: Main masthead image with three feature boxes for: latest news, weekly special and events
• ABOUT US: (navigation placeholder - will not be a page)
  • MISSION: single text page with no images
  • OUR FOUNDER: single text page with left aligned image of John Doe
  • OUR TEAM: page with main image of full staff that lists each team member and title with links to bio pages
    • JOHN SMITH: single page with headshot and bio
    • SUZY PUBLIC: single page with headshot and bio
• LATEST NEWS: articles listed with title, date and brief intro
  • 12 article pages with images
• EVENTS: event calendar loads with a list of upcoming events (this will populate from Google Calendar)
• CONTACT US: contact page with feedback for (approximately 5 fields and form results will email and store to a database)

You don't pay until you are ready to start development.

Once you've approved your quote, we will send you an invoice for 40% of the total estimated amount. We'll continue to work with you throughout the planning process by coaching and reviewing files. When you are ready to start development, send us a check along with the files and required planning docs.

Planning is the most important phase and will determine the overall quality of what we are able to build. Poorly planned sites lead to higher development costs and lower quality websites. Because of this, we give you all the tools and advice you need to do it right.

Here are the planning and design tasks:

1. Plan and create your Look & Feel design document.
2. Create a Wireframe document of site pages.
3. Create page "Comps" of key pages.
4. Assemble your Content Document and images.

Keep us in the loop.

When you work with The Dev Department, you will be assigned a Solutions & Development Partner. He or she will be your primary contact and, whenever you have a project in any phase of planning, they will touch base  with you weekly to ensure that budget, timeline or scope have not slipped. They will also review each piece of the planning process before it goes to the client to ensure that your and your clients expectations are clear.

When we build a site, we not only build the site exactly as you designed and planned it, but we also do all the testing and proofing that developers often overlook.

Some of the things we test:

• element spacing and irregularities
• font size, color, weight and line spacing
• spelling and grammar
• cross-browser testing and style sheets (we test for 8 different browser versions)
• common SEO issues (javascript errors, invalid XHTML)

We keep you in the loop.

During the build phase, we are in regular contact with you so that you always know the status of development as well as any issues that might arise.

Use our site review checklist before you take the site to you client to be sure you have covered all your bases.

Our goal is to make designing sites fun and profitable for you. However, there is never a guarantee that we will see everything, so we provide a Website Review Checklist to help you easily double-check our work before you send it to your client.

Here are some other benefits we provide:

• 60-day warranty on all workmanship
• Free Joomla training for your team so that you can train your client
• Free move to live server (when using Dev Department approved hosting)
• Joomla website administrators guide customized for your client