FLASH Websites

Advantages of a Flash Website

Flash provides an interactive environment for a more involved multimedia experience. We’re not just talking about rollovers that swap colors or images, which, by the way, are a piece of cake in Flash, where they can even include sound. We’re talking about the bigger deal here.

Flash allows you to incorporate sound into your pages via mp3 and wav files, allowing you to use, for example, speech or background music. You can also directly import digital video into Flash, which allows you to easily demo products or just show off the family. It’s true that Flash is not the only way to include video into a Web page. There are other tools, such as Windows Media Player, Real-Player, and QuickTime. However, the Flash player plug-in penetration is now at around 97%. Compared to Windows Media Player plug-in at 59%, Real-Player plug-in at 56% and QuickTime player plug-in at 41%, Flash is streets ahead.

Flash’s vector rendering processes give it the ability to adjust the entire display size based on the browser size and, in doing so, keep your images and text clean and unpixelated. This will become more of an advantage as people begin to more frequently surf the Web from sources other than desktop computers, such as PDAs, mobile phones, car displays or wrist-watches.

Flash gives you the ability to display data as part of an ever-changing process without having to reload or refresh the page! That’s right -- the data can change without even so much as a flicker from the browser.

Search Engine Friendly

Typical Web search engines (or spiders) cannot index content within Flash movies. If you create a 100% Flash-based Website, you may want to provide some text or HTML, displayed or hidden, on your Web pages if you want your content to be indexed by search engines. When I say hidden, I mean that the content should be available via a no script tag or other means that is search engine acceptable. This is perhaps the biggest shortcoming of Flash, and yes -- it’s a biggie.

However, Web Search Engines are improving their indexing of Flash Websites! The #1 Search Engine, Google, has made vast improvements! They've improved thier ability to index textual content in SWF files of all kinds. This includes Flash "gadgets" such as buttons or menus, self-contained Flash websites, and everything in between.

Google can index all of the text that users can see as they interact with your Flash file. If your website contains Flash, the textual content in your Flash files can be used when Google generates a snippet for your website. Also, the words that appear in your Flash files can be used to match query terms in Google searches.

In addition to finding and indexing the textual content in Flash files, they are also discovering URLs that appear in Flash files, and feeding them into their crawling pipeline—just like they do with URLs that appear in non-Flash webpages. For example, if your Flash application contains links to pages inside your website, Google may now be better able to discover and crawl more of your website.

Is a Flash website right for me?

If you have a text content heavy website, then HTML is a better option. But if you have a lot of photos or music, then Flash is right for you!

1. What does it cost to start my website?

2. What are the hosting costs and what comes with it?

3. What is your design rate?

4. What about domain names?

5. How about email accounts?

6. How long will it take before my website is done?

7. Are my design options limited?

8. What kind of options do I get in my design?

9. What if I already know the design that I want?

10. What if I want something that doesn't work with the Flash Website?

11. How secure will my site be?

12. Will I be able to see my site's visitor statistics?

13. What kind of maintenance can I get?

14. I want to make changes to my website. How do I do this?

15. What if I want more than one website?

16. What if I want my website optimized for the Search Engines?

17. What are some flash websites you have done?

This will depend upon your individual project. If your website will be hosted by us, then you will need to pay your hosting fees up front. Your hosting fees will depend upon the length of hosting time you choose to pay for at a time. All hosting fees must be paid for on a minimum quarterly (3 months) basis and are non-refundable. If we are registering a new domain name for you, will need to pay for that up front as well. For the design portion of your website, you will you will need to pay a minimum of 50% of your design fee up front. The remainder will be due upon website completion. There are no setup fees, no startup fees.

Click HERE to view our hosting options.

Dacia's Artistic Solutions has a base rate of $20.00 per hour for design services. However, we do have special package deals and can quote you a price based on the information you provide. We are constantly running special packages deals. Many websites can be created for only $200.00. To check on our current specials, please CLICK HERE. You can also contact us to get a quote.

If you already have a domain name, then we will give you the DNS nameserver values to point your domain to. Or you can send us your login info for your domain registrar and we will change them for you. If you do not already have a domain name, then you can register one or as many domain names as you like. You can choose to register your domains for 1 year, 2 years, 5 years, or more. Domain names cost just $12.95 per year. If you cancel your hosting plan with us, you will need to transfer your domain name. We will release the domain name to you and you will be responsible for registering it with a new domain hosting company.

If you host your site with us, you will be able to create your own email accounts like you@yourdomain.com. You get unlimited POP3 email accounts each with 2GB of storage (That's a LOT). You'll be able to login to your emails online, or use them with your fav desktop program, like Outlook or Incredimail.

Once the initial payment has been received, your account will be setup immediately. You will receive confirmation emails once domains are registered and hosting accounts are created. From there, your website completion time will vary greatly depending on a number of factors. The average website can be completed anywhere from 2 days to 1 week. Below is a list of the most common factors that will influence your website design completion:

Yes. We keep our design costs cheap! Our clients cannot afford to pay $1,500 for a website. Our websites are created using pre-designed options based upon a general layout. Using a state of the Art design program we can create up to 9000 different design possibilites. Your website WILL be unique! Because of the way we design our websites, we are unable to create a Flash website from scratch based upon a specific drawing or layout you may have designed. Images and text can only be placed in the allowed areas of the website layout. While these websites have some restrictions on them, the overall results FAR surpass any other Flash designs available out there - for a fraction of the cost!

Up to 110 pages	Basic Text Flash Intro	Image Galleries (Up to 10 - each with 50 images)
Media Player - 10 videos and 10 Music Files	Your own music background	A video on each page
Meta Tags	4 additional pages for advertising	A Live Spokesperson

If you have already drawn up a layout, or want something similar to another website, then our Flash Websites are not for you. Of course, we could always outsource the work to another company and upcharge you for it, but that's not our style. Custom made Flash websites built from the ground up take TIME - a LOT of it! It requires a person to go to school to learn how to do it effectively. And if someone has to spend months learning how to do something and paying to learn it, then they are going to CHARGE the client for it! We cater to the SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS. And by this, I mean the guy working from his house, or the woman who runs a small shop with just a couple of part timers to help out. Our clients cannot afford high prices to build websites. So we don't offer em :)

Then HTML is the way to go! You may opt for an HTML website entirely, or you may add an additional HTML Website and give the customer a choice of which website to view (similar to this site). If you noticed when you came here, you were given an option to enter the FLASH or HTML versions. Now to be honest, this particular website is not the best for a Flash version as it is very text content heavy. However, as a designer, I wanted to be able to show the client a sample of what one our flash sites can look like for you :) We can create both types of sites for you at a discounted rate.

Your website will be hosted on a dedicated server and you will have a unique IP address for added security. In addition, you may purchase SSL certificates from us. While many companies offer free shared SSL certificates, we do not recommend them. Shared SSL certificates will only cause many of your customers to shy away from your website upon seeing "There is a problem with this website's certificate" displayed by their browser. We offer only the best to our clients. For SSL purchasing prices, please CLICK HERE.

Yes. Upon request, Dacia's Artistic Solutions will email you with your website's visitor statistics. All stats will be emailed in a pdf attachment. You may request your site stats at anytime, or to have your stats mailed to you as well.

All clients who have hosting with us receive 1 free monthly update or change to their website design. Anything over that will incur the regular design rate of $20.00 per hour. For more frequent or regular updates, please contact us for a price quote. All clients who have had their website designed by us, but utilize a seperate hosting company, will incur a minimum fee of $5.00 per design change.

You may contact us at any time for changes and/or updates to your website. Updates are usually published within 24 hours of request.

We welcome multiple design projects! Contact us for a special deal on multiple website designs.

Your website will initially be created with some basic optimization. For more additonal and in depth Search Engine Optimization, please CLICK HERE.

Other than ours? View some of the Flash websites we have created HERE