If you have an idea for a site but don't have an actual site, you have some first steps you need to make before Small Box can be of assistance. Unlike other web design companies, Small Box does not provide hosting and maintenance for monthly fees. Our philosophy is that you should save your money for future enhancements, not overspend for a company to be in the middle of your web account management.

To get a domain you can easily register it through a company like GoDaddy.com. The domain name is your http://www.example.com address and the right choice of a domain name can have a big impact on your search engine results and business identity. Try to find one that is easy to communicate verbally and reflects your business accurately. Many .com suffixes have already been reserved, but there are other suffixes you may want to consider including .biz (perfect for businesses), .org (perfect for non-profits or organizations), .net (perfect for b2b or community sites), .mob, .tv, .name or .us.

The next step is hosting. A web host is essentially the computer that will hold your web files and serve them to the Internet. GoDaddy.com offers web hosting and we always recommend 1and1.com which offers very competitive rates on basic and advanced packages. Plus we really like their easy-to-use control panel that allows us to create your databases which drive content management.

When you contact Small Box for a quote on price and timeline for development, we will need to have information on both your domain and hosting whether it is a request to design a site from scratch, to make simple updates, or to add features to a site already created.

If you don't have this information, a good way to start is to run a WHOIS lookup, track the information to the current provider, and if you do not have credentials to log in, initiate a 'forgot your password' process.

Small Box is always going to promote an open source approach because it fits right in line with our development philosophy. We believe the Internet should be flexible, secure, dependable and require a minimum amount of work to maintain and extend the site.

For that reason we recommend our clients start with open source tools to build customized solutions that are easy and cheap to manage.

We use good old-fashioned code, not third party products like Front Page, Dream Weaver or Cold Fusion. Using these products can help a beginner to intermediate person create and manage sites, and if you are considering learning web design, these can be good tools for you.

Advanced web authoring is assisted by working in the code and understanding how it all works. Once effective code has been created it is always easier to recycle code that works from one project to another. However, each project has specific requirements that demand attention to detail that a programmer can effectively manage.

A website FAQ is a difficult place to address price because the cost is determined by a number of factors. We would like to be able to view the current site if it exists, consider design tasks that are required, create a feature list to estimate development costs, discover your marketing and search engine requirements to come up with a budget range for you.

It is not out of the ordinary for us to propose projects from $3,000 to $30,000, these are project fees with no monthly costs.

Small Box occasionally has openings on our small, but growing staff. We offer competitive salaries, profit sharing and health benefits for qualified individuals ready to work in our Broad Ripple offices.

Occasionally we outsource design, development or content creation to individuals or independent businesses.

Applicants should contact us with their skill set, recent employment history and an online portfolio for our review. We're really interested in hearing about what you are interested in besides the web, and what new technologies you are following.