I think one of the first and biggest concerns for any new business is setting up their website.  I have heard of people paying designers thousands of dollars to produce a website they don’t like.  I have seen websites that have been built by the neighbour’s teenager which were fancy but the grammar was terrible and I myself attempted to construct my own site because I had taken some courses and with my budget I had to do it on the cheap.  Hey something was better than nothing, right?  Wrong!  You only get one chance to make a first impression and if your website is... shall we say lacking then chances are you may be losing potential business. 

Now if you are looking at this you may notice that my site does not look all that bad for being a DIY project.  All I have to say is Wix and Weebly.  If you are interested in creating your own website but your techie skills are limited then you definitely have to check these guys out! 

Both sites are free to sign up and have hundreds of great templates to choose from if you don’t want to do everything from scratch.  They will help you obtain your domain name and support your site or they will allow you to use an existing domain name if you already have one.  They will provide photos if you don’t have any and they allow you to set up links and connections like Facebook and Twitter accounts.  Blogs, You Tube videos, special effects, google maps and shopping carts... All these options in a handy tool box that you essentially click and drag onto your pages.  SUPER EASY!!!

They will even help you with your SEO – Search Engine Optimization.   (A service for which I seem to be getting bombarded with in my junk mail but that’s another story.)  Best of all you can update your site at any time so you don’t need to wait 2 weeks for your “designer” to get around to it. 

What’s the catch?  There are some slight differences depending on your circumstances and what you want your website to do exactly.  Wix carries more of the flashier special effects and more variety in the templates.  Weebly is a little more basic but allowed me to produce my site with my own domain name for free.  Yes FREE!!!   (Wix will also publish your site for free but only if you don’t have your own domain name already.  The address will end up looking something like www.wix.com/YourCompanyName )  Both offer upgraded services and the pricing is about the same but even then, I think spending around $5/month for a fantastic site is more than reasonable.

My advice when setting up your site:

1.       Figure out what you want your Domain Name to be by trying to type in the address in your Browser.  If it’s taken either a site will come up or it will say that it’s under construction.  If the name is available it will say that the page is not found.

2.       On paper, map out the types of web pages you want.  Ex) Home Page, Contact Page, Portfolio Page and decide what you would like to display on these pages.   Even if you are using a template it will help you narrow down your choices when you are clear on what you want to say.

3.       Create and PROOF text that you want to appear on the site ahead of time.  Things like a company tag line, contact info, service information, personnel bios, company profile...ect.  It’s a lot easier to cut and paste onto a web page then trying to come up with it on the fly.

4.       Have your images ready and saved into a central folder.  Things like your company logo, background photos and portfolio images.  Again so much easier to select for your site if you know where they are and that they’ve been edited properly beforehand.

Good luck and happy website designing!

Hello everyone,

 It’s time for the 2nd post of what I hope will become a weekly blog for Benner Designs.  The purpose of starting this Blog is not to bore people with the technical aspects of database design.  There are a ton of great sites and programmers out there that are more than capable of fielding those types of questions.  (However I would never hesitate to answer any Access questions if people had them.)  What I wish to do with this Blog is to increase Benner Designs’ online presence and to express my sincere feedback on things that help make my small business successful.

That being said I wish to give my first shout out to the Airdrie Chamber of Commerce.  Benner Designs has been a member since 2010 and it has proved to be an invaluable resource of business contacts and ideas for me.  The yearly membership and event fees are more than reasonable and fit well into my limited budget.  Their frequent events are really focused on the ability to network with a wide variety of other businesses and community groups thus maximizing my exposure to potential services or clients.

They host everything from Face to Face Networking Events, Business Seminars or Workshops, Motivational Speakers, Golf Tournaments, Business After Hours Events, Small Business Week and the Annual Airdrie Home and Lifestyle Show.  (Just to name a few things)  All of which are great opportunities to learn, meet new people and get involved in the Airdrie Community.

I wish to express my heartfelt thanks for all their hard work and I have no problem recommending that you attend one of their events or sign up to become a member.  It is money and time well spent.

I think this is the most frequent question I am asked.  The simple answer is:  No.  A database is not a website. 

That being said a website can have a database, so they can be related.  A database is where information can be entered, stored, organized and analyzed.  A website merely displays the information or provides a means for the user to input the data.  If a database was a house, then a website would be the window.  All of your information is inside and you can see it, but there is a clear difference between a house and a window.  

When users enter data via a form on a website (external data) the information is transferred to a database hosted on a server.  Depending on the size and complexity of the site, software like SQL may be used to create the database to manage the volume of data.  A web-based solution not only involves designing the database it also involves designing the web pages and forms to collect the data.  This can be quite expensive to develop as the designer has to be well versed in both applications.

Benner Designs specializes in "In-House" data management.  This involves organizing clients' internal records, forms, and spreadsheets.  The information is not obtained from outside sources like a website.  These In-House solutions are considered smaller databases in the grand scheme of things and we use Microsoft Access to create them.  Organizing internal data is just as important as managing external data and this is where we believe we can be of service to other companies. 

Hopefully that helps explain why a database is different from a website or at least a little more about the services Benner Designs provides.