Javelin Communications

Welcome to our website. We built it from off-the-shelf parts that cost $140. Modular web publishing lets you upgrade your online presence for a tiny fraction of the price of a custom product.

Enormous investment has accrued around the gospel that business sites need to be built from the ground up. So, right about now, you are having a "they-don't-want-you-to-know" moment. You are discovering that the conventional wisdom is nothing but mythology.

They don't want you to know that web development is being automated just like word processing, page layout and graphic design were automated years ago by programs like Word, Quark, Photoshop and Illustrator. The graphical user interface is mature, proven, highly advanced and getting better by the day.

We've not talking wave-of-the-future. It's the edge of the now.

Prefab Construction

With modular web publishing, you buy a prefabricated website shell, called a template, and then customize it. Each template houses a series of modules which contain your content.

The package comes complete with a free, highly versatile, built-in content management system. Having previously worked with a dog CMS, I really appreciate this one. A caveman could use it.

Change words almost as fast as you can type. Upload pictures and graphics by pointing at the files. Insert links with a click of the mouse.

Style your modules with downloadable extensions for a unique look and feel. Turn modules on and off to customize page layout. Switch fonts and font colors with ease. There's even a nice little spell checker.

Also free and built-in: continual tracking of site visits. And by the way, again for free, you can add multiple modules for e-commerce.  Once the site is up and running, you don't need a webmaster. Anyone with reasonable computer skills can be trained to manage it.

Armed with some knowledge of HMTL and a little know-how in Photoshop and Illustrator, you could probably do the construction yourself. But a better choice is to have us initially set up the site and train you how to manage it. Here's why.

Content is King

Your website needs visual wow. But remember it is only a conveyance. The content — the message — has to aim true and make plain sense to your customers. That's where a lot of clients need the most help. It's also the hardest and most time-consuming part.

For an example, take the development of Javelin's site. I built it as a technology demonstration project with the aid of an associate who is a journeyman IT professional and web developer.

He helped me find a template I liked and tutored me in the CMS. I needed only about eight hours with him, spread out over three weeks, to get up to speed technically. But the creative part — developing the site content — required 10 times that investment.

There's another reason why you need to have some level of professional support. Web browsers are so divergent that the look of your site can never be totally consistent. It will have to be in effect averaged across multiple combinations of browsers and computer operating systems.

Also, depending on how wide a net you want to cast, we recommend that your site be optimized for search engine visibility. Your goal is to pop up on the first page of the search results whenever someone surfs your product or service category.

Even with the aforementioned caveats, I want to emphasize that development time and costs are telescoped dramatically.

Is the bell tolling for the all-custom website? Not quite yet. It's going to live on at big corporations.

Small and medium-sized enterprises, however, can be very capably served by this new, versatile and highly affordable modular web publishing technology.

We'd love to show you around.

-Jim Gribble