We’re just enjoying the beautiful sun and spring weather!  Below is a pic of the view from our 3rd story design studio.

Published a new website skin for lulus.com today!

After creating a logo & website design, McGrath Woodworks asked us if we did business cards, tradeshow banners, and car magnets.  The answer is yes!  We’ll be placing them in our portfolio shortly.

Getting well underway to a new Blog for LuLus.com!

Every website that we design at Chico Web Design starts as an idea.  Based on those ideas and client interactions, we put pen to paper and begin creating website design mockups.  Depending on the requirements, a full set of design comps will typically begin with a home page and inner content page.  More advanced web sites introduce member sections, payment details, and can go upwards of a dozen or so independent mockups.

Just as a builder draws blueprints, Chico Web Design creates our own set of blueprints for several reasons.

• It’s cheaper and less laborious to make changes in this phase
• It gives the client an idea of what their site could look like without the investment of full development
• Allows for open collaboration between our creative teams and our clients
• Gives us a venue to express our ideas about your business and site
• Sets the tone for the remainder of the pages

When creating a label design for locally owned Made in Chico, our creative team decided that it would be a good idea to print our best design comps for the owner Jacki to review.  Printing the labels really allowed Jacki to view the suttle difference between all of the drafts and envision what the final end product could look like.  The final label will be placed on a bag for almonds and will ultimately be placed in holiday gift bags.

This picture was taken from my iPhone so it’s a bit low resolution, however you can still see how much fun we had with the design.

As the leading furniture source in the Yuba City and Sacramento Area… read more

I was walking around the office today and decided to take a snap shot of a typical day at Chico Web Design.  The first picture is of Ben and Brent deliberating why Internet Explorer 6 has to be such a pain!  The second photo is of Brent working on a new website design for Esplanade Office, located here in Chico. Please excuse the resolution, they were taking from my cell phone camera.

All it takes, is time and money!

Going through my last year as a Management Information Systems student at California State University, Chico, one of my professors shared that motto with us. I had no idea then, how true those words would later become throughout my career. One of the most valuable tools sets I picked up through my education and experience is the management of a project from start to finish.

In the past, websites used to be 4 to 5 pages of content, had a cheesy animated mailbox icon for contact us, and were really just an afterthought to most business owners. Now, websites play a key roll in the success and sustainability of a business. Websites now have to “pack more punch”, interact with users, and be easily maintainable. These new web trends have required us web designers to refocus and become online software companies overnight.

Over the years, Chico Web Design and myself have come up with a common web design and development lifecycle tool set that we use on all major projects. Understanding these basic concepts will really give you and your company a glimpse into how we manage our projects.

1. Requirements Gathering
   Always the first and most important phase, requirements gathering. In the requirements gathering phase we speak with the client, gather their requests, required features, timeline, end goals, and any other ideas they have for their online business so we can begin to come up with a solid plan. This phase is used to communicate ideas and features between both parties.
2. Proposal
   After Chico Web Design has gathered the requirements from the client the proposal phase commences. A proposal is a formalized set of requirements that both the client and Chico Web Design can agree upon. Typically, a proposal will discuss the feature set for both the front end of the website, as well as the administration portion of the website. At this point, financial obligations will be presented to the client for approval.
3. Design Phase
   In the design phase, Chico Web Design will take all of the requested information and begin to create a draft of what the potential website could look like. We use a combination of graphic design tools such as Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator (for logos) to showcase how a website could look. Depending on the scope and budget of the project, we will come up with several variations of our thoughts and ideas to present to you. Design mockups are delivered in a JPEG format for the client to view on their personal computers.
   Sample Mockup | Final Product
4. Design Review
   Once the client has viewed the design mockups, a meeting or phone interview is scheduled to discuss the overall likes and dislikes of the design. Chico Web Design will always work with our clients until they are happy with their website design. This phase is very important because this is the backbone and framework for the remaining phases. When a website is in the design phases, changes can be made with ease. If we continue to the development phase, changing the design can take far more effort. My example to most clients relates to the building of a home. It is far easier to change the layout of a home when you are drawing the blueprints then to wait until the house is half way constructed. Often what was once a 5-minute change in the design phase can translate into several hours of redesigning and redeveloping.
5. HTML & CSS
   The next two phases require no interaction with the client. Once the design mockups are finalized and approved, we begin to prepare the website for a web browser. HTML and CSS are the languages used to present a website to a user via a web browser or mobile device. HTML controls the content of a website, and CSS controls the presentation of the website. Graphic by graphic, line by line, our development team converts those images into a format that will allow users and search engines to view your website online.
6. Development
   Once the XHTML and CSS phase is complete, our highly skilled web development team begins the process of turning ideas and drafts, into functionality and features. This phase relies heavily on the requirements gathering phase to ensure that the website functions as expected. Typically Chico Web Design builds it’s websites using LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) technology. In it’s simplest terms, our developers use a web language called PHP to retrieve information from the MySQL database. That information in turn is displayed using HTML and CSS
7. Content Population
   Leading up to this phase, it is recommended that the client is creating their content so Chico Web Design can easily populate and design the content quickly. It is the responsibility of the client to provide content in a digital format, or if they have chosen to use a content management solution, they can enter their content in at their own pace.
8. Quality Assurance
   Quality Assurance is the task of verifying that all portions of the website are performing as specified in the requirements gathering phase. Chico Web Design will perform quality assurance tests throughout the development process. Traditionally, we ask our clients to do a final run through of the functionality to confirm that it is up to their standards and works as expected.
9. Go-Live
   Go-live is the process of deploying a completed website from a development environment to production environment. If Chico Web Design is going to be the web host, this process is seamless and only requires the client to change a few settings at their domain registrar. Once this is complete your website is viewable to the public.

Client: Legacy By Design
Location: Chico, CA
Industry: Agricultural/Financial
Spotlight: Agicultural Succession Planning

Technologies used: PHP, MySQL, XHTML & CSS, XML, JavaScript

Read More About Legacy By Design