Decide what your organisation wants from a website! What do you want your website to achieve?

Have a look at the other websites hosted by Converge to get an idea of what we can do for you.

The more you plan your website and the better you communicate your requirements to us, the more likely it is that you will be please with the results.

• What does your organisation want to communicate?
• A basic Converge website is similar to an on-line brochure.
  However, you can use a website for more.
• A website can join-up new members and seek donations.
• Your organisation can publish a newsletter on the website or tell the world about your organisation's activities and events.
• Your organisation's website can be a contact point. It can be a place where people join up with other on-line activities that your organisation runs, such as; an email list, or discussion group.

How much time and energy is your organisation prepared to invest in maintaining a website?

Unless, your organisation is going to update the website regularly, it is important to avoid putting up material that will go out of date.

If your organisation is going to maintain an up-to-date website that changes regularly, it is important to identify the people responsible and the resources to make this happen.

Understand how the website fits together. How should people viewing your website find their way around? What sort of hyperlinks or navigation system should be employed?

Supply written material in an electronic format. We can read most word processor formats, including:

If you supply written information in an electronic format, then we we do not have to type it.
We not pretend to be typists nor do we enjoy typing.

Please also make sure that you proof read and spell check the material before it is sent to us. If we have to correct and revise material, the website will take much longer and the end result may not be what your organisation wants.

Finally please remember, if we have to type in or proof edit your organisation's written material, then we have less time for processing images and preparing web-page layout.

Graphics is an area that can cause major headaches.
Graphics work is specialised and time consuming.

Success on the World Wide Web depends on achieving a balance between interesting image content and a fast loading page. Images tend to be large, larger files take longer to load. The more images there are on a web page, the slower it will be to load.

Many Internet surfers will not wait around to see a page that takes more than 10 to 20 seconds to load. They will click off to somewhere else on the web. However, these same people are not likely to read a page that is just text. One has to find a balance between small interesting graphics and the speed with which these will appear on the page.

Choose your organisation's graphics wisely. Generally, try to avoid images that have more than four graphical elements. Avoid images that are too large or busy and will not shrink down to web size.

Reusing images will make pages load faster because the web browser stores images locally in the cache on the client machine. The next time a web page calls for that image the browser will load it from the local cache which is much faster than downloading it again from the Internet.

When you have decided on your graphics we can scan them in for you. The best practice is to supply up to eight high quality pictures for us to scan for your organisation's website.

In the past we have scanned pictures from brochures printed on coloured and recycled papers. Sometimes the pictures have been folded so that a line shows in the image. Paper-grain and flecks will show in a scanned image, this is especially bad with recycled paper.

It is difficult to obtain good graphic results with poor image sources. Correcting poor graphics is not always possible and usually takes a great deal of time.

We ask that your organisation try to provide the best possible images to scan from.

• Photographs and original artwork are ideal sources.
• High quality printed material is acceptable also.

• If you provide pre-scanned image files, please make sure that they do not have jagged edges.
• Please DO NOT fold your artwork!

If images supplied are not acceptable then we will not use them.

A logo is important to identify your organisation. Please provide the best quality version of your logo for the best results.

email: converge@converge.org.nz.

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