Simple Sites for Therapists

What you need to do.

There are two parts to the process - deciding what your site will say, and deciding what it will look like. You have to take responsibility for the first part, and I ask that you email me all the text that you want included, spell checked and ready for your site. You may have some idea of how you want it arranged, how many pages you want, what you want on each page and so on, so please do give me as much guidance on this as you want to. It's maybe worth saying that you don't need to email me everything all in one go. A lot of people find it easier to send me some text and then, once they've seen what it looks like, send me some more. The way that I work means that almost as soon as I start working on your site you'll be able to watch it develop - it's pretty much as if you were looking over my shoulder as I work.

While you're writing your text it's useful to think about how people might find your site once it's completed - particularly, how they'll find it when they're using a search engine. There's nothing too complicated here but it's worth having a look at what I've written on my "Getting your Site Found" page.

Too much text tends to make people stop reading and it's common practice to break up paragraphs with the odd neutral photograph. If you have some photographs that you'd like me to use then send them to me. If you have them in electronic format you can email them but if you only have them in hard copy you can post them to me and I'll scan them for you. Alternatively I have a bank of photographs that you are free to use - If you see one you like just click on it and it will enlarge and you'll see my name and a number on the bottom right hand side - just let me have the numbers of the ones you'd like used. One thing we can't do, though, is just pinch photographs off the web - that will infringe someone's copyright.

Whatever pictures we put on your site I would recommend that you include one of yourself - your prospective clients will be wondering what you look like and will be reassured by being able to put a face to a name. It goes without saying that you should pick something that clearly presents you as a professional. This is probably not the time to wheel out that cheery holiday snap of you late one evening in a Greek taverna! If you've got a logo of any sort then I can integrate that into your site - just email it to me or, if that's a problem, send it to me through the post. The Frequently Asked Questions section of this site is a useful resource too, so do have a look at that if you have any queries - someone may have already asked the question that's on your mind.

There's one other thing to bear in mind, and that's the issue of Domain names. I've given more information about these in the Domain Names section of this site - it might be worth reading that. You don't need to make any decisions about this before I've built your site, but you do before you start to publicise it.

Once I've got everything I need from you I'll start to construct your site. As soon as I've done that I'll email you the link so that you can watch it develop. Your job then is to check it through, make sure that everything's OK and, assuming that you're happy with it, pay for it. Once you've done that I'll give you the access privileges so that it becomes your site which you are able to edit - and I'll explain about how you do that too!