Dont get taken for a ride!

Here at iRacine.com our main goal is to provide Racine County residents with a clean, proficient, and up-to-date directory of businesses within the county (The challenge is just begining). In addition, we are working on a social networking system we feel will really bring the offline and online Racine communities together. All the while we want a "FEEL GOOD" atmosphere.

In this light, there may be web developers taking advantage of Racine-area business owners and we feel obligated to inform people in Racine County, or anywhere for that matter, about some do's and dont's when it comes to web design and development.

Salient Properties, LLC. not only owns and operates iRacine.com, we are a professional web development company, which primarily works with "domain investors." If you are unaware, there is a huge industry out there of people who buy and sell domains, as well as, create websites with some of the domain names they may be more passionate about. We buy and sell domain names and also create websites for other "domain investors."

What we are providing below is a little advice if you already own and operate a website or are considering a website for personal use or your business. These points are a general rule of thumb, not law, but best practices in the web development community:

1. You should own and manage your domain name, not the web developer. Signup with a registrar like GoDaddy and they will walk you through the process of doing this. The cost is negligible (there are coupon codes for $7.49 per domain name - and must be renewed each year. You may register for multiple years)


2. For a basic website that looks like this sample by Salient Properties it should cost you no more than $325. This is a quality starter site that can be expanded or managed by the web designer. They should customize a template for you, so you can add your own pages while keeping it pretty to look at! Prices may vary depending on any added complex coding or functionality.


3. Some developers require half of the money up front. While the argument is many developers have been stiffed (and it happens), a solid web developer, who is confident in their work will have you pay when the site is complete and satisfactory to both parties. Our mantra is NO DOWN PAYMENTS!


4. Dont allow the developer to link back to their own website unless they provide a discount AND/OR manage the search optimization and/or webmastering for you. And make sure the web developer is accountable to what promises are made. For example providing you with monthly reports on your web traffic.


5. Lastly, if the web developer offers hosting we recommend you shop around first. We have seen web developers with hosting capabilities claim the cheapest hosting around. 1) Cheap doesnt mean GOOD. 2) We actually host some sites on our servers, which are up 99.9% of the time, for FREE. The caveat is we require a link back to our web development business. This is not an uncommon practice. In any case, FREE is better than CHEAP!

If you have any questions regarding the information we are providing you or feel any of this information is misleading, by all means contact us via our contact form linked below, in our QUICK FIND section. We are happy to consult anyone on a web design project, but cannot guarantee our services due to the development of iRacine.com and other web development clients. That said, ask and we shall answer! We will point you in the right direction.