Choosing a Web Designer

page-webWho do you trust? Who is the expert? How do you know if a web designer is worth his weight in salt? Here are a few questions you might ask to ensure your decision to hire a company or individual is a good one:

  1. Do you build websites for a living, or on the side? How long have you been doing this?
  2. Can I see six of your most recent websites?
  3. Do you have references from clients past and present? May I contact them?
  4. Can I get a copy of your hosting contract and your pricing list?
  5. What platform or software do you you use to build your sites?
  6. Will I get a blog?
  7. Can I have multiple user accounts with different security roles?
  8. Do you utilize all the recent web standards (HTML,CSS, XML, Accessibility, etc?)
  9. Can I leave anytime and take my content with me?
  10. How often do you back up all my data? Do I get a copy?
  11. How often do you update your server software?
  12. Do you charge per page or have limits on storage and bandwidth?
  13. Do you support calendars? Photo Galleries? Web forms? Video? Audio?
  14. What type of support do you offer? Phone? Email? On site? Do you have a SLA (Service Level Agreement)?

Can you think of other questions you would like to know?

Posted in Services, Vault Multimedia | Leave a comment

Why we use WordPress to power your site

wordpress-pluginsVery few clients ask how we will build a website for them, or what software we use.  The question we do get is “Will I be able to edit the site myself?”  The answer is YES!  We are proud to exclusively use a content management system (CMS) called WordPress to build our websites.

Why? It is the #1 blogging platform (read more about this here) among the top 100 blogs.  It is also used by quite a few Fortune 500 companies!  There are a lot of OPINIONS flying around out there about the best way to build a site, but instead of jumping in and forming technical arguments that are lost on most people – we just use the #1 platform and rely on the “Wisdom of Crowds“.

WordPress is open source software.  This means it is free for anyone to use, change, write plugins for, etc.  WordPress runs on Linux, PHP, and MySQL… you don’t need to understand what these are, just know that they are all open source products that power the web server on which your site will live.  Free software, free operating system, free content management…. this translates into lower operating costs.

WordPress is among a handful of widely used content management systems.  We have tried several – all of the top 4 or 5 – and find WordPress to be the easiest to use while maintaining the best practices among website standards.  We strive to keep the technology as transparent as possible and hep you focus on CONTENT.  Remember – Content is King!!  SO easy to use translates into more relevant, fresh content.

WordPress is SEO friendly.  SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.  In real estate, you hear “Location! Location! Location!”  In the world of website, the 3 most important rules are: 1)Findability 2)Findability & 3)Findability!  You need to be found by those searching for you or your website is useless!  Matt Cutts is the expert we will point to to explain why WordPress is a good choice for your SEO needs.  He is the head of Web Spam at Google and lives to improve search quality.  He also sneaks in some great tips to help you out when writing your content:

Oddly, some website producers hide the software that runs the website.  We recommend you ask any potential website producers/designers what they use and why.  Take notes, go home and see if the information measures up to your own research. We welcome these type of questions – in fact, here is a blog post to help you ask the right questions!

Posted in SEO, Wordpress | Comments Off

Portable Sermons

www.portablesermons.com We built Portable Sermons to solve the “Podcasting Problem.”  Now its the easiest way to post sermon audio online, stream your audio, offer it for download, even send it to a friend.  You just upload and title it – … Continue reading

More Galleries | Comments Off

Using Your Newsletter Tool

If Vault Multimedia has built your website, or hosts your church website, you may have access to the newsletter tool after logging in to your site.  This Newsletter tool allows you to send newsletters to a list of subscribers.  Its handy and does a great job, but you may need a bit of help getting started.  Read on to read instructions and view some basic screen shots explaining the process. Continue reading

Posted in Tutorial | Leave a comment

WordPress: 30 Second Tutorials

These are quick little videos that move fast and make you motion sick :)   But you simply won’t find shorter tutorial videos that get you up to speed quicker…

Posted in Workshops | Leave a comment

Podcast Quick Start Pack

After teaching a workshop on Podcasting for churches, we put together this list of items that we recommend you purchase to get your church’s sermons on-line as quickly and as simply as possible.  (compiled February 25, 2008)

The following can be purchased online at Amazon.com:

  1. Apple iPod nano 8 GB
    Current price: $179.64 (10% discount)
  2. Macally iVoiceIII -  iPod Audio Recorder Black (IP-A181)
    Current price: $31.15 (65% discount)

In addition you would need the following:

  1. Line in cord. You would also need to purchase the correct line cord to run from your sound board to the line-in on the iVoice III.
    Cost for the cord will probably run in the neighborhood of $10-30.
  2. PortableSermons.com Pro account. This will serve all of your uploaded sermons for as long as you have the account.
    The cost is $29.00 per month.
Posted in Podcasting | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Websites for Churches, Non-Profits & Small Businesses

The sweet spot for us is building clean, straight-forward websites that the client can edit themselves. We use open source software to keep costs down and ensure that support is always there. Check out our GALLERY to see our work, or contact us for a demo or meeting to talk about how we can help you.

Posted in Services | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Podcasting Services

One of our passions is Podcasting. Churches and businesses everywhere are using this new medium to reach out to a new audience and to squeeze potential out of the existing work they are already doing. For churches, we have created www.portablesermons.com a FREE or paid service to skip all the complexity and start podcasting immediately. If you are a business and want to learn about podcasting, or need help setting up your podcast or producing your podcast — Vault Multimedia can help.

Posted in Services | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Google Apps Setup for Your Small Business, Non-Profit, or Church

Google Apps is a FREE online office suite that includes Email, Calendar, Word Documents, Speadsheets, Powerpoint, Chat, and much more. These services are available for free and allow your staff to share contacts, calendars, and documents — but getting it set up can be difficult and confusing for the non-technical person.

vaultmultimedialogo.jpgThat’s where we come in. We are advocates for your small business, church, or non-profit organization and want to help you save time and money. We will do the set up for you remotely (anywhere in the U.S.) and connect it to your domain name so your email matches your website address. It will take us about an hour and will only cost you $120 for less than 10 people. Once it is set up, there are no more fees, but we are always available to help with your Google Apps Email or website needs!

Drop us a line: info@vaultmultimedia.com or give us a call (916)295-9416

Posted in Services | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

WordPress E-vite Plugin

picture-1.png“You’re E-vited”

We have done quite a few church websites using the fabulous WordPress CMS / Blogging software. We have scoured the web to provide the perfect plugins and extensions to meet most church website needs. In our search, we never found a really good E-vite (Electronic Invite) tool… so we wrote one. Oh, and we are giving it away. Right now it is very clean and simple, but we do have a few changes in the works. If you end up using it on your site, let us know. We would love to hear your feedback.

Download the Plugin : youre-evited.zip (0.1)

Posted in Downloads | Tagged , , | Comments Off