This section is provided for our customers who like to read large quantities of text!!

Internet Website Hosting - AltaRede - Algarve Portugal

The AltaRede Internet website hosting platform provides a variety of options for you to host your websites in the Algarve in Portugal. We provide shared website hosting for those smaller businesses that require website hosting but do not require their websites to use scripting, database access or e-commerce solutions. We also provide vmware virtual hosting for those customers who require significantly more functionality or the security of their own web server.

All servers are housed in one of the AltaRede Hosting Centres which operate in Europe. AltaRede can host your Internet based services on our secure Internet Hosting platform, or can provide bespoke Internet hosting solutions tailored to your requirements. This allows our customer base to use our platform, not just for Internet Website Hosting, but also for disaster recovery solutions.

Choosing the right Internet Hosting provider is of paramount importance to many website owners. The choice is not just based on price, but on connectivity, security and network availability. Our hosting centres are mirrored, and provide the ability to move our customers virtual servers from one site to another. Our hosting platform has built in firewall and Intrusion Detection capabilities, and is monitored 24 hours a day seven days a week. This makes our Internet Website Hosting Platform one of the most resilient and secure platforms available.

Web Design

Your website should be considered a marketing tool. If nobody knows where it is, it is completely ineffective. The first goal therefore, is to create a design that is optimised (optimized) for the major search engines and with visual appeal.
A recent study by Carleton University in Ottawa revealed that it takes as little as 50 milliseconds for a user to decide whether they like a site or not.
So if your site doesn't look good, the chances are it is not reaching its' full sales potential. For most web designers, once they have produced an appealing design their job is done. At AltaRede, once we have created a website design our job is only half done. For a website to be truly successful needs to meet all the following:

Clearly shows what your company has to offer If the company offers a large number of products/services the most important should be prominently displayed The site's navigation(s) need to be intuitive (you'd be surprised at some of the navigations we've seen)
Points of contact need to be clearly visible Points of sales need to be simplistic and intuitive Site should not be cluttered with useless or marginal information Text should be inviting to read It might sound simple, but how many sites do you see that encompass the above aspects while looking good at the some time? However, we do understand that not all web sites need to meet some/all of these aspects - some sites need to be more art than sales.

Many sites suffer from lack of design variation, a lack of imagination and/or development ability. For this reason, we feel it is important to design individual sub-pages for some of our projects. These can help your site from getting stale and we make sure they are not too different from one another, so as not to confuse potential customers.

Web Development

For this section we have tried to keep technical jargon to a minimum, but as an overview of a technical service it needs to have a little. If you would like to know more about this service call 96 769 8255 (Portugal) or +44 (0)1344 392 858 (UK).

Web development is broken down into two areas: front-end development and back-end development. Front-end developers are a mix of a designer and a back-end developer. They are responsible for turning designs into a website, user interface and JavaScript widgets.
Back-end developers generally have no artistic ability and have not seen the light of day since they first turned on a computer. They spend their spare time watching Star Trek and coding Nintendo DS emulators. Back-end developers are responsible for programming all the functions of your web site that it's users will experience but never see - XML parsers, elaborate product databases, eCommerce integrations etc.

Front-end Development

The first stage of front-end development is to turn a design or set of designs into HTML and CSS. The majority of web developers will simply use a WYSIWYG editor like Dreamweaver to put your site into HTML. This is little more difficult than using Microsoft Word and results in an unprofessional end product. Web sites that have been constructed in a WYSIWYG editor will suffer from all of the following:

Messy and bulky code, which is difficult to update and maintain Pages will not be geared for search engine optimisation Updates to the site will cause degradation to already low quality HTML HTML will be inflexible and suffer from accessibility issues, reducing your target audience Contain numerous coding errors, which can cause cross-browser incompatibility and confuse search engines, again reducing your target audience Only makes use of a fraction of HTML and CSS. At AltaRede Website Design, every single page is hand-coded using scaleable, semantic, keyword-rich HTML. This means:

Our code is clean & minimal, resulting in pages that are easy to manage and update HTML is constructed in a way to best inform search engines what that page is about HTML is scaleable, meaning any content can be changed to fit any requirements and the size of the site can be increased infinitely without degradation (for accessibility & gee wizz purposes) HTML and CSS is provided free of errors and compatible with major web browsers. Your Web site will be compatible with all screen resolutions Just to give you an idea, 1% would be a liberal estimate of the number of sites on the internet that have a solid HTML foundation. In our opinion HTML is the easiest part of making a web site. So if so many development companies can't get that right what else are they going to do half-heartedly?

Once your site has been meticulously put into HTML, the next stage is to add features and facilities to the user interface. This consists of constructing light effects, such as the menu at the top of this page and more advanced facilities like a property database or online reservations system.

Back-end Development

Once a project has been through front-end development it is handed over to a back-end developer. This is the stage where all the 'behind the scenes' work goes on - the front-end of the site is connected to programming functions and databases that will make the web site actually work.

Our approach to programming is modular and object-orientated. All of our programming is created with extensibility in mind. Most of our programming is built on frameworks, which allows us to do more, to a higher standard in less time.

Search Engine Optimisation

Pretty much every web development company out there offers search engine optimisation (SEO).

If an 'SEO consultant' is telling you search engine optimisation is all about META tags, you should quickly put your money away and run for the nearest exit. There was a time when you could stuff META tags full of spam and hey presto you were on page one. Thankfully those days are long gone. Search engines are constantly evolving with the aim of providing higher quality and more relevant search results.

Our SEO service is broken down in to two areas:

On-site search engine optimisation - this involves making sure your site is easy for search engines to index and each page tells the search engines what it is about. Off-site search engine optimisation - this involves getting your site known on the internet, so search engines have a reason to think your site is worthy of being on page one.

On-site Search Engine Optimisation

On-site search engine optimisation can come in two stages, the first stage being initial optimisation. The aim is to create each page of your web site so that it tells the search engines exactly what it is about through the use of semantic HTML. At this stage we are shooting in the dark, since we don't know exactly what people are searching for to find your products and services. However, we use a number of tools we have available to us to guess what keywords people are searching for.

It is possible to increase the amount of keywords a web page is optimised for, which is carried out in the second stage of on-site search engine optimisation.

The second stage of on-site search engine optimisation involves reviewing what people are searching for to find your web site and to try and push your site into other markets that have become apparent are worth targeting. Realistically, you can only optimise a page so much for multiple keywords/phrases without weakening the other search terms and making the page read like a shopping list. However it is possible to optimise a page for a myriad of search terms using off-site optimisation.

Off-site Search Engine Optimisation

Off-site search engine optimisation is the main focus for all good SEO consultants in the modern search engine marketplace. You can make off-site optimisation work without any on-site optimisation, but the results are much better when the two are coupled. If you have been on the internet for a few years, it may be that your site already has some off-site optimisation that has happened naturally. This is a phenomenon which we can harness using a method known as link building. It is probably the most effective type of long-term SEO. We have dealt with some companies that have had a surprisingly good off-site optimisation without actually doing anything. Whereas other have been on the internet for years, spent large amounts of money on conventional advertising and were invisible on search engines.

Whether you already have a good presence on search engines, have struggled for years to get anywhere or have a brand new site that hasn't even been indexed we can help.

Final Remarks
When you are looking for a company to represent you on the internet to get the best results for web design, web development and SEO you would generally need to contract a specialist for each area. This can stagger your web site and reduce its overall impact. At AltaRede Website Design, we have brought strength into the company for all areas to ensure a high level of service.

If you've reached this far and you don't think we are the web design / development / search engine optimisation company for you, we wish you the best of luck on the internet. Or if you're interested in getting more information or have already decided that we are the company for you do not hesitate to contact us on 96 769 8255 (Portugal) or +44 (0)1344 392 858 (UK).