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News
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- Finally!!! You can now pay
your invoices ON-Line! Just go to
www.DogRiverDesign.com
and click on the Pay On-Line
link on the left. On the next screen type your invoice number in
and the amount you wish to pay*. You will be taken to a secure
server to complete the transaction. *If this is your first
PayPal transaction or you
have not verified your account, your payment amount will be
limited to a maximum of $2000.
- Would you like to have us
automatically debit your credit card for hosting and other
services? Give us a call and we can set it up for you!
- Either of these services are
easy to add to your site. If you'd like to be able to take
credit cards on-line or setup recurring transactions for your
clients, give us a call and we can get you setup in no time!
Net Watch
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Review]
Having A Successful Website Part 3
Where to Host your Site
If you’ve ever talked to a real
estate agent, you’ve heard about the 3 most important things to
take into consideration when building, buying or selling property,
“Location, Location, Location.” The same applies to where you
“build” your web business. There are probably thousands of hosting
companies and each of them has prices and services just as varied.
How do you know which one is right for your business?
While working at
Dog River Business Solutions from 1991 through 2000, I learned the
ins and outs of web hosting and email servers. Today things have
gotten incredibly technical and security issues arise everyday. I
do not see how a web design company can manage both server
maintenance and the web design end of the business. Realizing
this, when we started Dog River Design in 2001, we had to make a
hard choice, continue to maintain our own servers, or sub-contract
the hosting of our sites. This was a huge decision as we were not
only dealing with our own sites, but also the sites of all our
clients. We interviewed dozens of hosting companies and found some
common threads. Very few that we talked to understood the
complexity of web hosting services. Even fewer were flexible with
regards to the services they offered. Finally, almost all were
simply resellers for larger ‘server farms’.
These are some of
the things that we looked for:
Who answered the phone? If it was not answered by a real person, I
was not likely to talk to them any further. If I did get a real
person on the other end of the line, did I get that same person
the next time I called, or was I passed around the queue? Next,
were they willing to make adjustments for the way we do things or
did they require us changing our technology to match them? Lastly,
did they have any real world experience in web design, ecommerce,
and programming?
In the end we
found only one company that met our needs. What sold us on our
current provider is the fact that no matter what technical problem
we threw at them, they had dealt with it before and had a way to
make it work. Never did we get “no we cannot do that.” Every time
I called I talked directly to the owner of the company, who had a
background in programming and really understood the technical end
of web design and hosting.
The down side to
all this personal service is that it costs more than discount
hosting companies. But remember your entire web project rests on
the services of your chosen hosting company. Bargain price hosting
facilities are inflexible, impersonal, and require you to know
everything about how to develop your site. What you need to find
is a partner to help you build the best possible web site for your
business.
We want to be
that partner to help you develop your business on the web. We have
the relationships in place to provide flexible, personal, and
reliable hosting services for your web projects. If you have any
questions about our hosting services, please do not hesitate to
give us a call.
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Product Review
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Review]
Do LCD Displays really
make a difference?
 Well,
yes! LCD monitors (shown on the left) are much better to work on
than standard CRTs (shown on the right). Both Sue and I use dual
monitor configurations on our computers. This means that we had
two big CRTs on each of our desks. Sue had dual 19” monitors while
I had dual 17” monitors.
Not only did they take up huge amounts of space, but each monitor
was its own little heating system and electricity hog.
We spend 6 to 10
hours a day working on these displays. When Sue and I started
getting headaches on a regular basis, we both got new glasses. I
was a lot better but she was still having issues. I decided to
bite the bullet and got six new flat panel monitors. Two were for
using with our notebooks while at our Summerville office and the
other four were for our primary office in Cottageville. We have
seen a major improvement in our ability to work comfortably
without eye strain and fatigue.
I remember back
about two years ago my father purchased a 15” flat panel monitor
because of the strain that a CRT screen was causing on his eyes.
At the time we were thrilled to get a monitor for “only” $750. The
pric for a 15” flat panel LCD has dropped to as little as $250 for
some models. Wal-Mart even sells a 14” LCD monitor for only $169!
We decided on the
15” KDS–Radius RAD-5c for no reasons other than price and
availability. You can pick these up at your local Wal-Mart Store
for only $258 each. On a side note, I was stunned to find that
Wal-Mart carried all the basic computer components for the same
price or less than I can buy direct as a wholesaler, i.e. an
internal DVD drive for only $48!
So far the flat
panel displays have been a dream. They take up a fraction of the
space, generate little to no heat, and are very light on the power
consumption. As for the actual performance of the units, we found
that there were different versions of the same monitor which
caused some issues. The colors between each monitor were different
even with the exact same settings. This may be a problem with our
dual display cards more so than the monitors. However if you are
not hooking up dual monitor displays this will not be an issue for
you. These are definitely bargain flat panels that work really
well for our needs, but may not be adequate for a power graphics
design person. All in all, for the price they were a great buy.
Please send any questions about,
or ideas for product reviews to
Staff@dogriverdesign.com. |
