What I Offer

 Crafting Your Message & Design

Creating a website is a process. A website must have all the important information about your business, product or idea and it needs to be easy to understand and use. There are a lot of moving parts, more than just putting together some text and images.

When Do-It-Yourself Becomes Less Than Optimal

Many people are unfamiliar with the details of website development. Even when using a Do-It-Yourself system, creating your first website can quickly become overwhelming as it turns out to require more knowledge & skill than originally anticipated. That’s where my experience and skill come in.

You provide direction on what you want and I figure out how to make it do what you want. I provide knowledge and skill in web design, site usability, user experience and search engine optimization (so the site can actually be found by search engines like Google). I have a critical eye to aesthetics along with writing skill, good grammar and attention to detail. I can assist with writing and editing text for your site.

It is helpful if you provide your own images, especially logos, designed artwork and images of your business and/or products. I can edit images and if necessary obtain additional images from Adobe Stock, iStock/Getty Images, Unsplash or other high quality free and paid stock image resources. While I have an eye for graphic design, it's important to acknowledge I am not a graphic designer.

Squarespace and WordPress

I primarily use and prefer Squarespace and WordPress for the work I am doing now. Both are excellent and powerful platforms. Each has advantages and limitations. I have had some experience on a few other platforms and at some point it all really boils down to knowing web design basics and then figuring out the intricacies of a particular system, some are rather simple, others not so much.

Sites Based on Squarespace

Squarespace is a very good website building platform, providing everything needed to create and maintain a website. It’s is an excellent option for many.

An advantage of Squarespace is it handles all the more technical “backend” tasks such as site setup, security, platform updates and upgrades. All websites must “live” on a computer somewhere (be hosted) and have an address (domain name) so they can be found. Squarespace handles both. That makes it much easier for you to maintain your website. You pay the annual subscription fee, they take care of the backend stuff.

As a site owner you will find Squarespace makes it fairly easy to maintain and update your site once it has been completed.

Squarespace offers many options on how your site can look, your site can be tailored to meet your needs. Squarespace offers a range of functionality including blogs, newsletters and eCommerce with integrated payment processing.

While you can create your own website on Squarespace, the value I add is my knowledge of and experience with their system, and ability to tailor it to meet your needs.

Wallace Web Design is a member of the Squarespace Circle community of developers which enables me to offer a 20% discount on your first year of any Squarespace annual subscription plan.

I can help you if you already have a Squarespace website and would like to update it or need other help with it. I am available to revise or build-out existing sites built on Squarespace.

Sites Based on WordPress

WordPress is an excellent platform on which to build a website. It is fair to say that WordPress offers considerably more functionality and fewer limitations than Squarespace. However, WordPress can also demand more work on the “backend” and can be a lot harder to understand conceptually.

WordPress is a free and open-source content management system that is very powerful and provides options not available on Squarespace. WordPress offers the most options and flexibility, at a higher cost in time to setup, develop and maintain.

The WordPress code base is open-source and maintained by WordPress.org which provides the code under a GNU General Public License, so it’s free for anyone to use. The full WordPress platform is used on many websites of all descriptions from small and simple to very large and complex.

I am available to assist with revising and maintaining existing websites based on WordPress.

Sites Based on WordPress.com

If your budget is very limited then WordPress.com is one good option. WordPress.com is a commercial service that uses a modified version of the WordPress open-source software and provides a “free plan” with a limited set of templates and basic functionality including a sub-domain web address (e.g. yoursite.wordpress.com). This option can work well for a very basic website. Paid options are available to add a custom domain name (web address), more themes, design customizations, and remove WordPress.com ads. This is a great option for many.