What A Drupal Designer Can Do For You

By: S. Reeves

There is a lot that a Drupal web designer can do for you and your website. A Drupal designer gives you all the additional expertise and access to the best the popular content management system has to offer.

The Cost Of Free Programming

The Drupal CMS may be free, but if you do not have the time or skill to devote to it, you may cost yourself more in the long run. Even those who do know how to implement installations to run a Drupal site often defer to the expertise of a true Drupal expert.There is more that a Drupal designer can offer that can't be achieved with a simple cut and paste.

What many people fail to consider when building a Drupal site without securing the services of professionals are the finer points of web design.They look to function, without always attending to the finer nuances of form and aesthetics, or to navigability and search engine optimization, all integral parts of a complete website design. In the end, business and/or function is often lost because the visitors that do get to the Drupal site (if they do...) have a hard time using the site in the way it was intended. Frustration quickly leads to loss of visitors, participation, and conversions.

Do More With A Drupal Web Designer

When you work with a professional Drupal designer on Drupal site development, you build in a system of reliability and guarantee—guarantee that you have done what it takes to build the site right from the bottom up, and the guarantee of reliability that only comes with professional support. By working with an expert Drupal web designer, you attend to more difficult aspects of website design like:

•Graphic design; while you may technically have the knowledge to change Drupal site designs, you may lack the skills and 'eye' of a professional designer. The graphic design and aesthetics of a site are very important to create a fresh, appealing, yet still functional and user-friendly website. Work with a designer who is also an expert Drupal web designer and you will have the best of both worlds.
•Ecommerce and security; your chosen Drupal expert will offer additional knowledge and expertise that will ensure the usability of your site for ecommerce, and ensure that security protocols are in place to make Drupal ecommerce safe for you and your clientele.
•Drupal web hosting services; because Drupal and it modules require more space; an effective design requires that your Drupal web hosting needs have been attended to.Many Drupal designers offer this as an additional service. When you manage Drupal web hosting services through your designer, you can be sure they will secure the space and reliability that you need to keep your website always on.
•Drupal customization; the flexibility of Drupal relies on customizing your website with the many available modules and on customizing the code for your own personal benefit. While many people can manage building a basic Drupal site, customizing a site for maximum performance is something beyond the novice site builder. For a customized website, you'll need the help of someone with advanced programming knowledge.

You can build a basic Drupal site with limited function without programming experience in many cases. But when the functionality, personality, and reliability of your website matters, it is well worth your investment to do it right and secure the services of a valuable Drupal designer.

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What Makes A Hosting Service Friendly For A Web Developer?

By: Jim Hawkins

Developer friendly hosting
Why is developer-friendly hosting important? Given the technical nature of the web hosting and managed server industry, the end client or end user of a hosting service from the outset may often not know what web hosting is or even why they need it. This inevitably leaves what is the first point of contact - the web developer - in the role of organising, recommending, managing or even provider of website hosting.

In the web hosting hot seat, the web developer, whose core business is actually building and developing applications, ultimately spends a fair amount of time working with web hosting companies. With such a central role, making life easier for the web developer would seem only reasonable. So what makes a hosting service friendly for a web developer?
Up to date application support: A web hosting company doesn't really concern itself with the latest application developments, since they need to be able to adapt to all applications, old and new.
The newest releases, frameworks and technologies are critical for a web developer. When you use them you can accomplish more with less and satisfy your clients' needs. You can also stay one step ahead of the competition and design innovative applications. They are also a lot of fun!
Support early on for emerging technology is key. To name but a few that might have existed otherwise, consider Tomcat, Pylons, Zope, Drupal and Ruby on Rails.
Accessible support: Being in control of the production environment for most of the work produced by web developers and being accessible for technical support and resolution of issues is critically important.
Delivery Service is dedicated to providing fast, consistent service to our customers. We maintain foot, van, and truck divisions, and staff over 150 employees. We provide messenger service to the 5 boroughs of New York City and the Tri-State Area. Messenger service and vehicle service can either be requested for standard or rush delivery. To save time and money RS gives you the option to pre-schedule your deliveries by programming your recurring orders in our system.
Accessible means: * Phone support - some things are much faster and easier to resolve over the phone than via email. * No phone queues - sitting on hold for 20 minutes each time you need support is a sure way to kill productivity, not to mention causing hair loss. * Email tracking systems - you can't always expect to deal with the same person at your hosting provider but a ticketing system can ensure your request doesn't get lost and more importantly that all requests are dealt with, having knowledge of your support history. * Escalation - if you've got a complex problem there's nothing worse than trying to resolve it with someone that understands less about the problem than you do. Getting to the right person quickly is the key.
Discusses honesty and integrity as the basic principle of leadership. Defines quality leadership as a process beyond technical competence. Successful leaders continually demonstrate honesty and integrity as an essential element of their professional fabric; a lack of commitment to the principle renders all other skills meaningless. Depicts honesty and integrity as essential elements of human behaviour that promote and support quality relationships. Defines honesty and integrity in the context of building trust and maintaining credibility.
It's the technical competence of your team keeping services online that is ultimately responsible for making your application sing and making your life easy every time you pick up the phone or reach out via email. It's an easy issue to flag, but what defines technical competence in a web hosting team? * Not using CPanel or Plesk is often a good start. * An underlying personal interest in technology and more specifically a passion for Linux and open source technologies. * A desire to implement the best technical solution to the problems presented. * Obsessive-compulsive attention to detail. * Sound testing, troubleshooting, debugging, and analysis skills. Having the desire to drill down to the root cause of problem rather than dealing with the symptoms. * Tertiary qualifications in computer science or equivalent. * An environment which fosters ongoing development of skills, sharing of knowledge and constant improvement of process.
Rapport: Ultimately in any business relationship, when you find that supplier or client that you enjoy working with, you just know it. But what makes it so? perhaps it's rapport - "a close and harmonious relationship in which the people or groups concerned understand each other's feelings or ideas and communicate well" - or in simple terms, it's dealing with people that are on your wavelength.
In order to have a connection in that web host - web developer link this is a blend of technological competency, easy to get support and a fundamental awareness and functioning with you to see that your work hums along.
If this kind of developer-friendly hosting sounds like it suits your needs, then you should read our other web hosting articles and then contact us so that we can help you decide.

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