What is Drupal?

A. Drupal is quickly becoming known as the #1 open-source CMS used to build scalable sites with a vast range of features. With its built-in features and free add-on modules, it provides affordable solutions to meet your online needs. Drupal has hundreds of off the shelf modules to help you accomplish almost anything you need to add to your site in the future. A small sample of the possibilities include blogging, photo galleries, a forum, newsletter signup, polls, streaming media, podcasting and much more. We have used it to create corporate websites, social networking sites, sites with ecommerce needs, and non-profit organization sites.

Drupal allows you to publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content. With Drupal’s content management system, anyone in your organization can update your site from any online computer in the world. Read More about Drupal

What Do You Charge for a Site?

A. Our custom designed content management websites start at $15,000 CDN. Depending on the scope of your site and the features you are looking to add, the pricing will vary.

A basic quotation includes a browser-tested tableless CSS, XHTML site with an integrated Drupal content management system. By choosing Image X, you can also be assured that you will receive:

• Expert guidance on content organization, usability and site navigation from our Information Architect
  
• Consultation on the design of your site. Our skilled design team will ensure that your vision is translated into a visually appealing, solid design.
  
• Training on how to use the content management system so you will be able to easily update your site’s content

If you’re looking for more economical options for your new site, we recommend checking out some of the “Web Design Companies” at the bottom of our Referred Services pages.

How Long Does it Take to Build?

A. Typically, a basic website will take 2-3 months to design and build out. This timeline includes the following stages:

• Project Planning
• Information Architecture and Navigation
• Site Design
• Development
• Content Input
• Site Launch

Sometimes the turnaround time can be faster if a client has all their content ready and if they’re prompt on responding to approval requests. For larger sites the timeline could be 6-12 months or more depending on the scope of the project.

Do You Provide Site Maintenance?

A. Yes. We have a convenient Maintenance Support System that allows you to purchase maintenance time with us. Read more about our system and its benefits here.

Do You Provide Print Services?

A. No. We don’t provide graphic design or printing services, but we know some great graphic designers that we can recommend (feel free to contact us if you’d like to get in touch with them). We also have several printing companies with whom we often work and refer to because of their reliable and economic work.

Here are a couple print shops we’d recommend:

• Globe Printers
• White Rock Design and Print

How Do I Find the Client Section?

A. To access our Client Section, please click on the green “LOGIN” button in the top right corner of our site and then enter your username and password that you should have received in and initial email from us.

The other way to access it is by clicking on the blue link at the bottom of any of our emails that we send you from our Client Section. The web address of our client section is http://imagex.clientsection.com. We’d recommend you saving our Client Section web address as a favorite bookmark in your web browser.

If you’re a new client with us then you should have received an email from us with the username and password that you’ll need to login (if not please contact us and we’ll provide you with it). Clicking the “Remember Me” box will allow you to access the site again without entering your login information each time. For more information on how to use our Client Section, please click here.

How Do I View My Design Mockups?

Once we complete the design concept for the homepage of your new website, our team will send you a link to view the .jpg mockup. To view it properly, you’ll need to click on the URL link we sent you in your browser of choice:

In Firefox, Internet Explorer 7 and Safari:

Open the file in the browser and it will most likely appear in a smaller size.

If so just click on the image to enlarge it.

Resize the browser window so you only see the site image with no white space around it (unless the background of the design is entirely white and then you many not notice the separation of whitespace around it).

This is how your new website will look as the background will stretch to fill the browser screen (once it’s built out) with no whitespace around it.

In Internet Explorer 6

Click on the in the bottom right corner of the image to enlarge it.

Adjust the size of the browser window so there are no white borders showing.

How Can I Keep up to Date With the Latest From ImageX?

A. Presently there are 3 ways to keep informed with with the latest news from ImageX:

1. Subscribe to our Newsletter – Just add your name and email address to the Newsletter Signup block that you’ll see in the sidebar on the right of your screen.

2. Subscribe to our News RSS Feed – This will let you know the latest news from ImageX.

3. Subscribe to our Blog RSS Feed – Our articles will range from instructional/tips for non-techie business owners to discussions with industry insiders. You can subscribe to the tags of your choice and thus only get sent what’s pertinent to you.

“Read more”: about how RSS works

How Should Language Selection be Displayed on the Web?

Creating sites in other languages is known as internationalization. A common debate in internationalization is about how language choice should be displayed on the web.

Roger Johansson from 456 Berea Street proposed 4 options for language display. Mr. Johansson is a web professional who focuses on web standards, accessibility, and usability. Note, that his articles are based on his personal opinion. However, note that in this particular article I’m citing, there are a number of people from around the world who have chimed in and given their opinions and described their experiences. Think of this as a small survey study.

4 Options

1. The flag of the country most closely related to the language.
2. The name of the language as text in the language itself, possibly followed by the name of the language in the language of the current page.
3. The flag of the country most closely related to the language plus the name of the language as text in the language itself.
4. A neutral flag plus the name of the language as text in the language itself.

The preferred method of use by most is #2: The name of the language as text in the language itself, possibly followed by the name of the language in the language of the current page. This is because using flags are problematic. Flags represent countries, not languages, thus should not be used as a way to change languages. W3C agrees and so does other well known web professionals and web usability professionals such as Jakob Nielsen. They all claim that the name of the language in the language itself is the preferred method. Information Technology Generalist and Specialist, Jukka Korpela, does a good job explaining why the use of flags for languages is plain wrong in his article, Flag as a symbol of language – stupidity or insult? Even neutral flags such as that used by the United Nations or a globe does not represent languages well. Not all countries are members of the United Nations and the typical US centric position does not adequately represent the whole world. A flat-world in the shape of a flat would be too much and does not guarantee that users will make its association with language.

Some commenters also suggested country codes such as those given on the ISO 639-2 Registration Authority site. Codes may work for geeks but the average user may not even know what the code is for their language. One commenter noted that Switzerland has four languages and you would easily offend a Swiss French speaking user by offering him or her an icon with a flag from France. Similarly seeing a French flag would be an insult to the Quebecois in Canada, as noted by another commenter. It appears that many people look upon the use of flags with quite a bit of sensitivity. Jukka Korpela states that a flag of any country should be treated with respect; insulting a flag insults the country and its people.

Flags can work well to communicate the geographical location (i.e. localization) but text works best for language changes. Flags bring you to a localized version, usually for the sake of currency (see Apple.com below). One commenter noted that when they see a British flag, they assume it’s British-specific content, not just English. Therefore, localization should not be confused with internationalization.

Another thing to note is that content negotiation, where content is automatically served in the language the user’s web browser specifies as the preferred one, is not yet a reliable solution so many websites still use manual options for language selection.

From our research findings, we would recommend option #2 from Mr. Johansson’s list but with a few possible variations.

• #2 above but instead of including a translation of each language name in the language of the current page, include the word “Language:,” “Change Language:,” or “Select a Language:” in the language of the current page. This will make it clear what that link is for for everyone.

For lists of 4-5 languages, they can be listed across the top of every page. If there are more languages or if the client intends to add more languages down the road, use a drop down menu for the list of languages (see This is New York City).

Here are some screenshots of popular sites that provide language options without the use of flags:

This is New York City:

Choose Chicago:

Facebook:

Love Life Live Nikken:

What is RSS and Why Would I Want to Use It?

A. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and its a way for you to save time on keeping up on the information that matters the most to you. Watch this video from Common Craft for a quick understanding of how RSS works: