Frequently Asked Questions - Website Design

We are physically based out of St. Louis, MO. We have graphic designers and website programmers on staff who work remotely. Stadia Studio's owner serves as the Single Point of Contact (SPoC) for our clients and is available via phone, email, Skype, text message and instant message consistently. We work for clients throughout North America and beyond very effectively.

When we are working to complete a professional website for a client, we're often asked what our process is and how we can develop a website without face-to-face meetings. First, we use email as our primary communication tool. We send our clients a series of emails during the development process that outline what their next steps are, what questions we need answered, and discuss what we're working on. By using email, we can provide this information to a client in a way that they can deal with it when it's convenient for them. By receiving the responses via email, we can easily share them among team members and refer back the included information at any time during the course of the project. (We have also provided online instructions and additional information with regard to these initial emails here.)

Design drafts are emailed to clients as PDF files which can be shared and printed as needed.

The website in development is placed on a private Stadia Studio server and the URL is shared with the client. Again, this facilitates the client being able to review and share development progress as their convenience.

Conference calls, group instant messages and even Video conferencing is scheduled as needed to discuss complex topics, provide training, and review development progress. For our more complex projects, we may also utilize online task tools like BaseCamp to communicate site development progress. We have an internal project management system that we use, so such tools are only used when needed for the client's benefit.

With this development process and procedures in place, we can avoid some of the issues and delays that trying to schedule on site meetings can cause.

When offering a new, professional website design, Drupal is usually our first recommendation. Stadia Studio does support both Joomla and WordPress. Other platforms like Magento, Volusion, Shopify, Zen Cart, PHP Nuke, DotNetNuke, Expression Engine and so on may be supported depending on the circumances.

Regardless of the platform, Stadia Studio will provide a complete content management system that is professional and a great representation of your particular business or organization. All CMS implementations receive a custom design, social media integration, and complete search engine optimization and marketing services.

When offering a new, professional website design, Drupal is usually our first recommendation. Stadia Studio does support WordPress, however, and will occassionally build a site on the WordPress platform if it makes sense for the client to do so.

Regardless of the platform, Stadia Studio will provide a complete content management system that is professional and a great representation of your particular business or organization. All CMS implementations receive a custom design, social media integration, and complete search engine optimization and marketing services.

When offering a new, professional website design, Drupal is usually our first recommendation. Stadia Studio does support Joomla, however, and will occassionally build a site on the Joomla platform if it makes sense for the client to do so.

Regardless of the platform, Stadia Studio will provide a complete content management system that is professional and a great representation of your particular business or organization. All CMS implementations receive a custom design, social media integration, and complete search engine optimization and marketing services.

Our standard hourly rate is $50. Non-profits, family and friends receive a discounted rate.

Our Drupal implementations start at $1250. All new website projects are quoted a flat project rate, so our hourly rate only applies to maintenance and upgrades. New site projects are also discounted for non-profits, family and friends. Your actual project rate will be communicated as part of a complete proposal once your site requirements have been established.

Evening, weekend, holiday and emergency service may be charged at a higher rate, depending on the circumstances.

No. Every Stadia Studio website receives a custom design. Because each site is also a Drupal Content Management System implementation, the custom design is converted into a custom Drupal theme so that the CMS can display the site as intended.

A template is a design sold or downloaded online, usually as a PSD or collection of HTML and graphics files. Templates are used or sold over and over, so any site built using a template runs the risk of having multiple simiilar sites on the internet that look identical. Furthermore, it's unlikely that a template can truly reflect the style and nature of a unique business, or suit their website needs perfectly.

The design of your site refers to the overall look and feel. We employ a draft/revision process to ensure that the final result is a design that our clients are 100% happy with.

First, you are invited to give us any ideas or requirements you may have already for your site. These might include favorite colors, existing logos or branding, or links to other websites that you like. You may want to provide sketches or mockups if you have a clear idea in mind of how the site should look, but that is certainly not required. We'll take as much or as little information as you want to provide.

We then work up a draft of your new Home page and send it to you as a PDF file. You can open it, print it, share it with friends and family, and then send us your comments. If you love it and just want some changes or revisions, we'll take care of them and send you and updated draft. If you don't like it at all, you would simply indicate what you didn't like and where we went wrong and we'll start over and provide a new draft, repeating the process as needed. There is NO limit on the number of drafts or revisions.

Once the Home page has been finalized and approved, we may provide one or more secondary page draft designs, as needed.

As soon as all required layouts have been approved, the design draft is locked and turned over to our development department for coding. We take layered PhotoShop files and slice them up to produce the requisite graphics and write PHP and CSS code to develop a design engine that Drupal can use to display every page and aspect of your site exactly as it appears in the design drafts.

Here at Stadia Studio, we do things a little differently.

Our development process begins, not with the site design, but with the development of your CMS back end. First, because the Drupal CMS will use a custom theme to display all pages and aspects of the site, the design does not need to be created first. In traditional HTML-based sites, designers would create the design for the home page, then duplicate it for every other page. This is not necessary, and allows us to work on the content and functionality of the site first. This is extremely efficient and beneficial because both the client and the developer can see and test content and functionality before many of the design elements are even considered. We may find, for instance, that pages or features we though were going to work one way will actually work better differently. Therefore, when we get to the design phase, the designer should have a fully functional site available as a reference, rather than having to imagine what text and buttons and features will be needed.

So, we start by building your new CMS, including all pages and functions. The new site is built using one of the included basic themes.

Once all content and functionality is complete, a custom design is drafted for your new site. That draft is provided as a PDF for your review and eventual approval.

Once your draft is approved, we convert it into a custom theme for your new website and activate it.

During this process, we will ahve conversations with you regarding search engine optimization, targeted keywords, and other internet marketing topics. Before Go Live, your site will have complete Meta Tags set up along with automated Sitemap and XML Sitemap capability.