A well designed website contains more than just nice looking pages. While the look & feel of your website should fit your business and your brand, good looks aren't enough. When you choose a website development company you should expect them to deliver a website that is built on technology that supports Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and is friendly to both search engines and your human readers (SEF). You should also expect a website that is protected from unexpected server crashes and unscrupulous hackers. 

At Amherst Partners our base website development package includes all of the following features and capabilities:

• A website that is built on the time-tested Joomla Content Management System.
• A look & feel that is aesthetically pleasing and makes your website and your brand unique. We use customizable templates from RocketTheme, or Joomlashine as the basis for the majority of our websites (custom template development is also available for an additional fee).
• Basic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) through the built-in capabilities of the Joomla CMS.
• Search Engine Friendly (SEF) names and addresses (URLs).
• A website Firewall to protect your website against unauthorized changes provided by the RSFirewall Joomla extension.
• A website backup & restore system provided by the Akeeba Backup Joomla extension.
• Customer/Client registration with login access to protected areas of your website - optional, you can choose not to utilize this capability until you have a need.
• Website content editor that allows you, the owner or designated employees to, update your own website content.
• An RSS publication feature added to every site - configurable by section and category so you can selectively create RSS feeds (RSS can automatically feed an appropriately configured Facebook page).
• Setup and configuration of Google's Webmaster Tools to track and proactively feed Google your site pages for indexing in their database
• Setup and configuration of Bing's web tools for feeding their search engine your site pages.
• Setup and configuration of Google Analytics to track detailed statistics about each and every visitor to your website.
• Addition of a Social Bookmarking feature to your website so that visitors can easily share and/or bookmark specific pages on your website.

When we quote your project the price given includes all content generation and/or migration and any Photoshop work required to fit your existing logo or other artwork into your new website. If you are starting a new business or a new organization and don't already have a logo we will design one with you as part of the project. Note: Graphic Design Services to create a new custom logo will be quoted separately.

If you need a website hosting provider we now offer website and email hosting and will perform all the necessary account setup and configuration. If you need to migrate from an existing hosting provider or if you need to change your domain name registrar we can also handle all of the details for you at no extra charge¹.

The following optional features can be added to your website at any time for an additional fee based on the scope of the project. We will provide a fixed-price quote for any of these options.

• A newsletter publishing capability that uses articles written and published to your website.
• A user community building capability that supports a variety of user controlled and owned capabilities.
• An event calendar for scheduling and publishing a variety of events to your website.
• Extended photo album tools.
• Extended photo slide show tools.
• Setup and configuration of a Facebook Business Page for your business or organization.
• Setup and configuration of a Twitter account that we link to your Facebook account.

And, if you need something unique to your business or organization we can usually locate an available website extension or if necessary, have one developed. Custom configuration and/or development work is performed at the rate of $75/hour².

Once your website goes live and you have used your 2 additional hours of content development time all content updating work we perform is at the rate of $50/hour².

1. Note: All domain registration and hosting fees are charged separately by the individual provider (including Amherst Partners Hosting) and are not part of the quote provided by Amherst Partners for your website development.
2. There is a minimum of 1/2 hour that will be charged for any hourly work performed.