Our Process for Building Websites
We craft rich, dynamic website and website-related experiences. We specialize in creating websites in which we and our clients can manage their website’s content easily. It’s also about making future updates easier and more economical. We achieve this by building all our clients' websites in our proprietary Content Management System (CMS) solutions.
Additionally, we create custom web applications (extranet solutions) to assist clients with managing specific aspects of their business in an online environment.
Your website is built to ensure website visitors know who you are, what you do and options for interacting with you. It’s about confirming you are a legitimate business as well as bringing you new and repeat business.
08. Testing
The time it takes and the value of the Testing Phase is often under-estimated and misunderstood. Typically, the ZDI Team will have three to six people test a single site and a minimum of two complete passes through all website pages and records.
We test the links, pay attention to load times, proof the copy and optimize every aspect making sure it works as expected across multiple platforms. Comprehensive testing of all aspects of the site is performed to ensure every aspect is working as expected.
We agree with the Website Standards Project about stability which reads:
"Most web standards are generally designed with forward- and backward-compatibility in mind — so that data using old versions of the standards will continue to work in new browsers, and data using new versions of the standards will “gracefully degrade” to produce an acceptable result in older browsers."
"Because a website may go through several teams of designers during its lifetime, it is important that those people are able to comprehend the code and to edit it easily. Web standards offer a set of rules that every Web developer can follow, understand, and become familiar with: When one developer designs a site to the standards, another will be able to pick up where the former left off."
The ZDI Team continually refers to the following resources:
W3C
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), along with other groups and standards bodies, has established technologies for creating and interpreting web-based content. These technologies, which we call “web standards,” are carefully designed to deliver the greatest benefits to the greatest number of web users while ensuring the long-term viability of any document published on the Web.
Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
The Web Accessibility Initiative provides strategies, guidelines, resources to make the Web accessible to people with disabilities. WAI develops...
- guidelines widely regarded as the international standard for Web accessibility
- support materials to help understand and implement Web accessibility
- resources, through international collaboration
Web accessibility evaluation tools are software programs or online services that help determine if a website meets accessibility guidelines. While Web accessibility evaluation tools can significantly reduce the time and effort to evaluate websites, no tool can automatically determine the accessibility of websites.
- Complete List - to show all tools in the list maintained by WAI
Web Standards Project
The Web Standards Project is a grassroots coalition fighting for standards which ensure simple, affordable access to web technologies for all. Founded in 1998, The Web Standards Project (WaSP) fights for standards that reduce the cost and complexity of development while increasing the accessibility and long-term viability of any site published on the Web. We work with browser companies, authoring tool makers, and our peers to deliver the true power of standards to this medium.
The standards:
- W3C Standards
- HTML 4.0 - HyperText Markup Language
- XML 1.0 - Extensible Markup Language
- XHTML 1.0, 1.1, XHTML Modularization
- CSS - Cascading Style Sheets
- DOM 1 - Document Object Model Level 1
- ECMAScript (standardized JavaScript)
The advantages of using web standards:
- Accessibility to software and hardware
- Accessibility to people
- Stability
Read more about what the web standards and the reasons we, to the best of our ability and the tools that are available to us, use them.
Section 508 Standards for Electronic and Information Technology
Web-based Intranet and Internet Information and Applications (1194.22)
Updated: June 21, 2001
These provisions of the standards provide the requirements that must be followed by Federal agencies when producing web pages. These provisions apply unless doing so would impose an undue burden.
Assistive technologies: Screen Readers
Screen readers are software programs that allow blind or visually impaired users to read the text that is displayed on the computer screen with a speech synthesizer. For more information about this topic, please visit the website for American Foundation for the Blind™.
- The Web Standards Project's Accessibility Task Force plays a key role in assisting product developers and manufacturers to improve Web standards support within their products. The Task Force also works towards promoting a better understanding of Web accessibility by designers and developers, corporate organizations and government institutions. Read the full WaSP ATF manifesto here.
SIGN ON THE DOTTED LINE
Agreements are part of the process, too, and we like to be up front about them. These are our standard Agreements that may be modified to accommodate special projects.
- Remuneration for Services Agreement
- Service Level Agreement for Virtual Web Hosting - Shared Clients
- Service Level Agreement for Dedicated and Virtual Web Hosting - Single Client