Our basic premise is this:  
A business website needs to tell your story so your customers and/or potential customers will want to visit your brick and mortar store.

Question: What type of business website should I have.

Answer: The simplest website that will meet your needs.

Here is a list of the types of website packages that we design and implement for our clients.  Read each description to find the website that’s right for you. Remember that you will want the simplest website that will meet your needs.  It will save you money, headaches and will bring in more traffic if you have the correct design without unnecessary clutter.

Simple and Direct Website: A 1-3 page website that is simple but visually appealing and user friendly. This type of website rarely changes and just tells a part of “your story”. Quick, easy and inexpensive.

Branded Static Website: A 3-10 page website that tells your customers most everything they need to know about you. This type of website will generally remain static but one or two pages may require updating once a month. We will strive to match your branding, marketing scheme, colors and overall feel.

The Simple Dynamic Blog: This website will rest on the “WordPress” backbone. We set up the site, install needed plug-ins and widgets, and the website is all yours. The owner can immediately start making blog posts to tell your customers everything you want them to know about your business. This takes dedication but for the right person can pay handsome dividends in gaining and/or keeping customers. This option is for the business owner who wishes to be known as the local or regional “Expert” in their industry.

The Branded Blog: This plan is similar to “Simple Dynamic Blog” but we will strive to match your branding and marketing scheme. We can install shopping carts, forums and other social type features.

The Full Content Management Website: Fully branded and complete. This website will sit on the famous, reliable and popular Joomla or Drupal content management backbone. This is a very big project but for a mid-sized business an excellent choice. The small business owner should consider this option only if they are willing to invest at least 5 hours a week in developing quality content.

The E-Commerce website: This is for the business that has decided to take the plunge into selling products on-line. Our E-commerce websites, including set-up of on-line payment gateways, rest on a Zen Cart backbone. Fully dynamic, incredibly automated, easy to add products to sell to local and worldwide customers.

Custom Package: Not all businesses are created equal. We can create a unique website with all, some or just a few of the bells, whistles and eye-catching widgets currently available. While Cobweb Market believes the “all the bells and whistle” type websites are less useful, we will give you what you want.

Improvement Package: If you currently have a website, we will be glad to discuss updating it. Of course, your neighbor’s friend will have to give up control of that website before we start work on it.

If you would like more information, use our “Contact Us” form or information on that page.  We’re local and will likely answer your call up to 9:30PM.

Toni Bondy

Technology consulting? What the heck is that? You said you retired from geek speak and now I see you geek speaking?

There are times when “Geek Speak” has to be used. While using “Technology Consulting” is confusing we couldn’t fit:
“We like to help people learn how to use computers, software and networks so they can move on to the important things in life” on our website menu.

In short, Tim and Toni would love to help your business spring into the computer age. However, we don’t do cell phones, i-pads, Mac’s or tablet computers. The reason for this? We don’t believe most people and/or most businesses need to be personally “connected” 24/7. Remember, keep it simple, keep it easy and most of all keep it fun.

So…what can Cobweb Marketing do for you?

• Help you build a computer.
• Build a custom computer for you.
• Upgrade/Fix your computer or help you do it yourself.
• Network your computers.
• Help you discover software that can simplify your business processes.
• Contract with your business to keep your computers running properly and cleanly on a month basis.
• Developing a computer disaster recovery plan.

The Cloud…We want to be in “The Cloud”
I get asked about “the cloud” quite often and try to avoid this sticky question. It’s time to give our definitive answer to the question “Should my business be in the cloud”.
Tim and Toni say “Not now!”

While some companies excel at offering services “in the cloud” we don’t believe the technology is mature enough to trust for doing everyday business. A number of very wise people have said the famous words “Keep it Simple Stupid” or KISS. This applies to buying into “the cloud”.
Okay, so that was a little ranty, but facts are facts no matter how you wrap them up.

Contact Us Before…
Contact Tim or Toni at Cobweb Marketing before you start buying stuff. We’ll be glad to be a sounding board, offer our thoughts and expertise to your future technology purchases.

What you need is a basic understanding of how Windows creates a networking connection, a few basic tips in order to get your network setup and running properly, and a good dose of luck.

Creating a home network can be a daunting task these days.  There are SO many options out there that it quickly gets very confusing and often overwhelming.

First the basics – which covers most households in America:

With so many version of Windows on home pc’s these days you may very well run into the biggest difficulty of all – Windows 7 does NOT allow networking with any other version of Windows.  Not Vista, not XP and most definitely not Windows 2000.

So if you have a Windows 7 pc in your home along with some older Windows operating systems, resign yourself to leaving your Windows 7 machine all by itself and then network the remaining pcs.  Oh and if you ever want to use your network for printing capabilities, be sure to attach the printer to one of your older systems.  If it’s attached to your Win 7 machine, the rest of your pc’s won’t be able to access it.

In a perfect world, you will have 2 or more Windows 7 machines in your home.  If that’s the case, networking is simple. Check to be sure that all machines are running Windows Firewall, then walk through the networking wizard on each machine, adding the password you generated on the first machine when you are asked for it.  Done!

In an even more perfect world, you are running machines without Windows 7!  If this is the case, simply use the networking wizard on your newest pc (in most cases that’s a Windows Vista machine).  Once you’ve run the wizard and named your network, go to the other machines and follow their wizards in order to change the network name and establish the network.  Done!

And in a not so perfect world, you just bought 1 Windows 7 pc and have a couple of other computers that run Vista and/or XP.   This is where you have to resign yourself to simply leaving the Windows 7 pc out of the network loop.  Setup the remaining computers by running the network wizard on each of them as described in the above paragraph.  Done!

Now the not so basic home network setups:

Computer owners these days are purchasing a wide array of items that “can” be networked together.  Some may have wireless adapters included, which require a wireless router in order to utilize them.  Others are still hardwired and will require a standard router.

If this situation describes you, you will need to purchase a router that offers both types of connections. Once you have a router that fits your needs, you need to get everything connected to it – either hardwire connected, or wirelessly connected.

And once that’s done you need to set up the actual network that will allow you to see ALL the devices from each separate pc in your home.

The  difficulty is in figuring how to network all the various components you own into one large, happy network that plays well with all its varied parts.

I’ve been working in the computer industry for 15 years and there are still things in setting up a large home network that stump me, so I totally understand if you are looking at your xbox, your playstation, your wii, your DVD player that says it’s ready for wireless networking and your brand new tv that says it has a wireless network adapter and throwing up your hands in frustration.

Add all of those items, plus an iPad touch, a cellphone with a data plan, a couple of home computers, a new home laptop plus your laptop from work to the mix and I wouldn’t blame you one bit if you ran screaming from the house like a little girl.  =)

Before you do that though, take a deep breath and keep reading.  It CAN be done!

We’re assuming that you already bought the proper router, as explained above.  Now it’s time to move forward.

First you need to figure out which items in your house you want to connect and network with.  Once you have your list on paper, group them by wireless device or wired (with cat5 cable) device.

Next you need to be sure you have all the cables you’ll need so count them up and go buy them if you don’t have enough, or if the ones you have aren’t long enough to reach your devices.

Once you have the cables, connect the wired devices to the router.  Follow the instructions that came with the router and don’t skip any steps!  Your router instructions will tell you how to connect it to your first pc, and then how to install the router software and configure it.  So long as you take it slowly and read each part carefully, it isn’t difficult at all.

So now you have the router working and all your wired devices connected.  It’s time to check each device to be sure that they can reach the internet.  For now we’ll assume that they can.

Now it’s time to configure your home network.  Choose the newest Windows pc (usually Vista, but might be an XP computer) and walk through the network wizard.  This will establish the home network and give it a name.  Your network wizard may ask you to copy the settings to a disk to use on your other pcs.  You can do this if you want to, but I generally ignore it and just set up each computer by using the wizard.

Once your wired devices are on the network it’s time to setup the wireless devices.  For this you will need to go back to your router software (it opens up in your browser window on your pc) to configure the wireless network settings.

Follow the instructions in the browser window in order to set a wireless network name and encrypted password.  For the time being, it is easiest to allow the router to “broadcast” itself.  Unchecking that option will require manually adding MAC addresses to the router through the software, so it’s not something you want to tackle if you’re new to networking!

Once you have a name and password for your wireless network it’s time to connect each wireless device!  This part is fairly easy since your devices automatically search for any available networks.

Turn one of them on and it will try to find your network.  Once it finds it, it will lead you through the setup.  Part of that setup is to require you to enter the name and password that you set in the router software.  Once you enter that name and password, your device should quickly connect to the network.

Do this for each wireless device until you have them all connected and talking to one another.

You’re Done!!!

Hopefully this brief tutorial has given you the necessary tools to setup a successful home network.  If your particular home network is more complicated than the situations I’ve described, or if you followed all the instructions and still can’t make it work, I can help.

If you live near me, call me and I’ll do my best to troubleshoot your problems over the phone.  If that doesn’t work, I can visit your home to setup your network for you for a low fee.

If you don’t live near me, send me an email (use my contact form) and I’ll be happy to help you out by emails or phone.