F.A.Q's.

  • What's it all about?

    We can't tell you the meaning of life, but we can tell you what we're all about: providing high-impact e-business & e-marketing services, and doing it with creative flair. We occupy a unique intersection of business, art and technology. Put all three disciplines together, and you get Door4!

  • How much does a Door4 website cost?

    It all depends on how you want it to look, and what you want it to do. The cost of a website is a direct reflection of the amount of design and development studio time spent on it.

    When we provide you a quotation for a website project, it shows you all the technical & creative components that go into your website, along with a detailed breakdown of the design and build options specified.

    A component is any feature that adds functionality or features to your website. They can be anything from a simple image gallery, to a fully fledged E-commerce store. The price of each component is shown separately on our pricing table, so you can see exactly what the breakdown of costs are.

    When pricing a project, we like to give 3-4 pricing options, from a high-end 'bells and whistles' website with all options included, to a cut-down website with maybe less in the way of technical components and a simpler design. We understand that you might not want to divulge your budget, and this is a way of showing you what you can get, independent of this.

    If you've read the above information, you'll understand that it's not as simple as giving a single figure answer to the question 'how much does a Door4 website cost?'. Please pick up the phone and give us some information about what you're looking for, and we'll be happy to oblige!

  • How do I keep the content of my website up to date?

    We have two Content Management System (CMS) tools available. We call them 'PageEdit' and 'SmartEdit'.

    PageEdit provides a simple to use method of updating general page content without you needing to return to the Door4 design team to perform minor updates. This saves your time in briefing us to make changes, and reduces expenditure on changing website text.  You have the ability to edit text, and create bold items, bulleted lists and other editorial items.

    For more advanced content management requirements, Door4 SmartEdit is the tool for the job.

    SmartEdit gives you powerful & flexible options to administer a news system, a catalogue of products, or a gallery of updatable images. Whilst PageEdit can be compared to a word processor, SmartEdit is customized to your and gives you detailed control over the display of content on your site.

    The most popular use of SmartEdit is in administering a 'News' page. SmartEdit takes you step by step through filling in the news template, formatting your story and adding images. It will then allow you to choose a 'Live' date for the story, which will then determine the date and order in which your news stories are published on your site.

    Our CMS tools make it very easy for you to keep your website up to date.

  • How easy is it to leave my existing web designers and move to Door4?

    It's very easy to do. We will take care of the technicalities and make sure the change-over is smooth. We can take over the management of your domain name, email services, web hosting and web design, and speak to your existing service providers for you. Let us talk the jargon to them!

  • How future-proof will my website be?

    Every single new Door4 site is constructed using Web Standards, which means they conform to best practice recommendations as set by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the body set up to ensure websites remain accessible to the widest possible audience.

    One of the principles of Web Standards is that the content of a website, such as text, links and information lists, should be kept in a separate place from the graphic styling information (the 'Style Sheet') that determines the 'look' of the site.

    The separation of design and content does not affect the user's experience, as the two sets of information are combined in the user's browser before they see the page.

    This way of working has many beneficial effects, including how easily you can make design changes and upgrades: you do not have to tear down the whole site and start again when you want to update the look of the site. Graphic design changes can often be made across the whole site without having to edit each individual page.

  • Are your websites 'accessible'?

    As mentioned above, use of Web Standards means the site's content (page headings, paragraphs, lists and links) is kept separate from the visual formatting information and is only combined in the user's browser. This way of working is crucial to ensure that people with visual impairments can use the site, for two reasons:

    Firstly, they can use screen reading software that converts the text content into speech. For this to happen effectively, the content must be kept separate from the formatting.

    Secondly, they can over-ride the site's default Style Sheet with one of their own that is easier to read, with larger text, greater spacing and, higher contrast between items.

    Both these accessibility methods will work as standard with Door4's websites, as they are a result of good web design practice. Use of Web Standards and correct design practice also ensures that your site will be displayed correctly in the widest possible range of web browsers, and will continue to be displayed correctly in future browsers.

  • What can you do to get my site ranked highly on Google?

    A big factor in search engine ranking is how easily a search engine can read and understand the contents of your site. As we mentioned earlier, the benefit of constructing a site with Web Standards is that the content code the search engine reads is not cluttered by any styling code, and as a result, can more effectively work out what your site is about, and determine the value of keywords.

    Search Engines base the value of the text on your website on the function that text performs. Text on your site can function as links, headers, page titles etc, and search engines consider words with these special functions as more valuable than straightforward body text. So for search engine ranking purposes, it is vital that links and headers are displayed as text, and not images.

    We would describe these effects as 'inbuilt SEO', as it is SEO (Search Engine Optimization) as a result of good web design practice, and this is inherent in all new Door4 sites.

    We are also able to offer further 'targeted' SEO options, where we proactively add content to your site that will generate favourable search engine rankings.

    We go through your site and ensure that key words and phrases are in the highest value places. Search engines give particular value to words found within page headers, links and page titles. So it is a great idea to make all these things contain the key words you wish to be found via. Our targeted SEO service includes analysing a site and ensuring that page titles, links, page headers and the general site text all prominently feature the words via which you wish to be found. For more information on how we can help your site achieve good Google rankings, please see our page on S.E.O.

  • What programming technologies do you use?

    As standard, we build websites using Microsoft's ASP (Active Server Pages) technology, with MS SQL Server or MS Access where a database is required. These are industry standard technologies for enterprise level websites.

    We are also happy to work with PHP/MySQL if your existing site uses it and Door4 are required to make site upgrades on your behalf.

  • What kind of Project Management service do you offer?

    We guarantee that the management of your project will be personal and thorough. Your designated Project Manager will be available for you to speak with at any point, and we encourage you to ask them anything at all!

    Web design is a relatively new industry, but it is rapidly maturing. We're at a transitional point where there are 'best practice' web design guidelines, but so far only a relatively small percentage of web design companies actually apply them. As a new industry, there is still a certain amount of mystery surrounding the web design process, which has meant clients having to take a leap of faith and keep their fingers crossed that their chosen web design agency will deliver.

    Door4 believe in making the website creation process as absolutely transparent as possible. We believe in explaining exactly what we're doing for you, and why we're doing it, to demystify the website creation process and show you what you're paying for.

    We will give you a clear picture of the timescales involved and demonstrate the benefits to both parties of working in a coordinated way.

  • How can my website avoid getting targeted by spammers?

    We have some great tools to help you fight spam. Any forms on your site (such as an Enquiry Form) can be protected using 'CAPTCHA' technology. You've probably seen it on other websites: squiggly, distorted letters that are hard to read. Ok, they're hard for you to read, but they're absolutely impossible for a spammer's 'spambot' software to read. The result is that you don't get deluged by spam emails via your site's enquiry form. Some website owners have reported 100's of spam enquiry form completions every day - these clog inboxes and can cost time and money dealing with the junk email — not to mention the possibility that genuine enquiries may be missed.

    In addition to fighting 'spambots' that trawl the internet looking for forms to fill with spam, we can also help you fight against spambots that search websites for email addresses to spam.

    We use technology that obscures your company's email addresses in the HTML code of your website, so that spambots cannot read and harvest them, but when they are displayed on your visitor's screen, they can be viewed and used as normal (particularly to allow a clickable email address.)