FAQ

"Lior (Weissbrod) Computer Consulting" is a legitimate business in Israel (VAT free) that deals mainly with setting up and producing small to medium websites both for corporations and for private persons.

Most of the sites you see online, that sell domains and hosting, only provide space for your files and expect you to perpare the site yourselves.

In Israel, specifically, there is a lot of misinformation. With the lack of choice of brand name small to medium companies, many people are lead by default toward the major companies, which charge prices of up to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Ironically, only the smaller companies even bother to display their specs. A close inspection would reveal to you that even the major companies tend to give inferior specs for higher prices than the American standard - simply using the fact that most people would rather stick with a local business that speaks their language, even if they get less, much less, for more price.

Would you pay double the price for half the quality if this was a television? Why should it be different for a website?

Sure, one would not travel to the US to purchase a television, but that's why we're here. Our servers are supplied to us by our American partners and therefore we consider ourselves to be providing the best of both worlds. We give you a local service - but in an American quality and for American prices.

You get more space and bandwidth (as well as countless features) for lower prices than most local companies would give you. We also strongly oppose hiding information. Our entire layout can be seen in the Specs Page.

Our servers are supplied to us by our American partners and therefore we consider ourselves to be providing the best of both worlds. We give you a local service - but in an American quality and for American prices.

Yes. A CMS system lets you manage your site without knowing any programming. Not only does our server come with a default CMS system, but we offer a more advanced one ("Geeklog") which menus come in a variety of languages.

Yes. For an extra charge, we add an exclusive modification to our CMS (see previous question) that allows you to create a site that presents different languages in parallel. This means each visitor would see the same site but in his preferred language (assuming you translated your content)!

It is our belief that Flash per se is not a bad thing. However, many site owners have turned it from means to the purpose.

A site made entirely in Flash is not only an unnatural entity (e.g. it takes the "Back", "Forward" and "Stop" buttons into early retirement), and not only would it render search engines unable to index your site, but it would mean that a designer would have to re-create the site if even to fix a misspelling in one letter. In other words, it would make a CMS (content management system) out of question and instead would cause you a 100% reliance on your designer.

If you choose to pay for items such as Flash buttons, keep in mind it would also slow down production. Changing text contents can take seconds while changing a Flash item, no matter how small a change, starts a whole process.

A Flash intro may impress on the first time, charm on the second, make one smile on the third, but what about the 10th time? The 100th? The 1000th?

Another factor to consider is return visitors. Ask yourself if you really wanted to wait a for an intro to load and then play each time you entered Google Search? Speaking of Google Search, it's the optimal website - short and to the point. It doesn't mess around and just does what it's supposed to - and it made his creators billionaires for it.

Also, try to see things from the average surfer's point of view. Their attention span is very short. They have endless other websites to go to. Have your site load too much and they would lose interest

If you still want a Flash intro, at least consider to embed it in the regular site's content and not to put it in a separate page that would create one more elimination gate.

In the new millenium, a website is no longer an added value. It is a must. Not only does a lack of which mark you and/or your business as outdated, but without a site, you simply don't exist. The Internet increasingly becomes the primary tool - if not to buy the final product, then at least to gather information and to make a smart educated decision. A website would give you exposure to customers who would not have approached you otherwise.

In addition, it would keep you in touch with your existing customers by establishing a community around them.

Purely technically, the large space we provide would give you a place to store files online - securely, if you wish - e-mail messages, databases, etc. Also, our virtual private servers allow you to become your own virtual root, which means you could install and run your own softwares.

Speaking of e-mail, your customized e-mail addresses and large space would basically give you your own personal Gmail.

A website is a marketing tool with great potential. But like every marketing tool, an investment in public relations and in advertising is the thing which would bring the goods.

Other than mentioning the site in business cards, in company's street signs and in conversations you're having, you have to cause as many websites as possible to provide a link for the site. Desirable as part of a story (warning: a mentioning in news sites may bring down the site as long as the story is in the main page), but any link whereever it may be would help to advertise the site and increase its exposure in the search engines. Nevertheless, try not to do so in an immoral way. Not only might it be illegal (spam), but cheating Google, for instance, could lead to your excommunication from it, an act that is almost equal in its importance to taking your site out of the Internet.

We'd be glad to provide you with marketing advise and consulting.

In the Internet your website competes with endless other sites. Only advertising would give it a real boost among the rest. Keep in mind in the Internet advertising is both focused and relatively cheap. Advertising includes buying a list of certain words in search engines which when searched after would usually put your site above the other ones. The advertising campaign is usually in fixed prices (a few thousands dollars) and for a year.

In Google though your site would appear alongside the regular search and not instead of it (i.e. no selling out), the payment there is monthly and the price is completely dynamic. This means you can advertise in whatever price you wish to and stop when needed, so there's nothing to lose.

We would be happy to negotiate between you and the search engines and therefore spare you completely of the entire bureaucratic and technical process for a fee.

It's hard to emphasize the contrast between how easy it is to establish a community around the present customers, and its unfullfillment in in practice by most companies. Use this to your advantage. Pages for FAQs, scrolling news, forums, etc. would provide your customers a feeling of the extra value they get from you, a feeling that will make them come back and even bring their acquaintances.

We see this as an important and unused point and recommend you to use it for your advantage.

A site can really come down to 3 things:

1. A domain.
2. A one time site creation.
3. Hosting.

In short, no. A domain just gives the impression that your site is official, mainly because you get a short URL address (e.g. mydomain.com) with exclusive rights to it. The downside is that you have to constantly re-purchase the rights for the domain or it shall expire.

The re-purchase is done in yearly cycles. But you can buy for years ahead. That way, not only do you get a discount for paying ahead, but you would then only have to deal with the domain up to once in a decade.

In short, no. A local domain just gives the impression that you have taken the decision to only deal with a certain country in your business or personal data. In the age of globalism, it is usually only done purely for appearance.

Be it as it may, technically it does not matter. Any visitor could see your site regardless of your domain. However, local domain registars tend to be monopolies that force special rules. For instance, the .il registar ISOC does not grant one a free choice of how many years to pay ahead. In addition, it takes much higher prices than those of a global domain (com, org, etc.).

Each site is a world of its own with different needs and resources. Therefore we must set a personal price for each of our sites. However, we strongly oppose the hiding of information and therefore our order preparation form provides some estimations. After reviewing your request, we could present you with your own unique price.

Unlike a domain, hosting is mandatory. If we take a car as a metaphor for a website then a domain would be a driving license, which grants you the right to drive. One can choose not to drive, but it limits him. If he does get a license, he would have to go through a procedure and pay for it every couple of years to re-new it.

Hosting would be the car itself, which shall always require fuel. Back from the metaphor, to run a site you basically hire a server that works 24/7 to put your site on the air. The hosting payment is hiring fees for the server.

If we take a car as a metaphor for a website then a fluent development would be leasing.

Hosting alone is only good if you wish to make a one time site and only pay so it stays up (like fuel for a car).

But if you wish to have an address for a quick solution of each problem that may arise and/or if you plan to update your site frequently (and prefer us to do it for you), you would probably be better off paying fluently for that and therefore receive a "leasing" like service.

A compromise option is to pay only for hosting, and then per hour each time you wish to update or improve your site (e.g. upgrading its software or adding new materials every once in a while).

These files were created or edited over the years by us and are released to the general public in open source form. The files that were created or the parts that were edited by us are distributed by us without a license. This is as long as those who use them maintain credit to us (and specifically, keep the URL that is embedded in them).