Who I Am
My name is Michael Athorn. I've been a commercial fisherman for 30 years and currently own and operate the F/V Margaritas, out of Apalachicola, Florida. My lifestyle has given me much time over the past 20 years to pursue a fascination with computers and web design. I have designed and built a number of personal web pages, commercial web sites and e-commerce sites. Some I have online right now are linked from the menu at the left of this page. As I wind down my commercial fishing career, I'm building my website business and taking on more clients and building and maintaining more sites. I hope to retire from fishing in the next year or so and devote my time completely to my family and to my website design business.
Design
We work with a number of html editors, using a combination of text based editors and more complex site editors to create and refine a page or entire web site. Tools we use include NoteTab, for editing my own code, TopStyle Pro for creating and editing CSS (style sheets), Aptana Studio to edit some page elements and upload them to the server. We also use Adobe CS3 (Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Flash, Illustrator and Photoshop) to build and edit visual elements and other parts of various sites. We can create flash based animated slide shows or intros. We can build you Java based elements. We can help you stream music or video from your web site. We can help you build and implement an online store. Some of what we can do is demonstrated at the "demo" link above. We can use any combination of design elements to build a page or site that will be uniquely your own. Contact me for a more detailed oversight of what we can do to fit within your needs and your budget.
Optimization
Every site we build is completely optimized for search engines. We will use Google Web Master Tools and other optimization tools to make sure your site is compliant with the various standards the major search engines use to rank pages and bring them higher in the list of hits for a particular search. We optimize meta tags, titles, keywords, and all html attributes to fit within the guidelines the major search engines like to see. We submit site maps to Google on a regular basis and, for sites we host ourselves, submit them to all the major search engines every 30 days to keep them high in the rankings. Nobody can guarantee a good return on a particular search but we can, and do, make sure that all the sites we build are built and implemented in the best way possible to obtain good results from germane searches.
Management
We can design your site and provide hosting, put it online for you and keep it up and running with whatever level of input and updating you choose. We can add or subtract to your site as either your market or your inventory changes. We can insert news articles or just headlines or add scripts to do this automatically. We can add new information or make changes to existing pages or just change your welcome message or artwork to reflect the seasons or your mood. We can do it all for you or help you get set up with a site you can take over and handle on your own.
We can handle getting a domain name registered for you and take charge of all that is involved in setting up a host and installing the complete web site. We can set you up with multiple email addresses and either supply you with the tools to keep your pages updated and manage your email addresses or we can take care of those details for you as you go along.
Why Us?
We believe you will find working with The Captain's Designs both simple for you and rewarding for your web presence. There are many web designers offering similar services but we can offer you a level of expertise and personal attention that is hard to beat. Let us cast your net and help you take charge of the Web and make the most of the opportunity that is there.
Rates
We charge $200 for a single page or the front page of a site. For this we will design a page using any graphics you provide, photos of you or your business, or stock images. We can also design a page from one of many templates that we have, using either our own or stock graphics but customizing it so it is uniquely yours. For further design work or site upkeep we charge $60/hour billed in quarter-hour increments. For registering a domain name we charge $50, although if you want to go through the steps you can do this yourself a bit more cheaply. Our fees for hosting, based on us being resellers of hosting, not active hosts, are flexible but very competitive and fair. We can have a small website hosted for you on a state-of-the-art data center with multiple email addresses and plenty of space for multiple pages and graphics for $150/year. If you want a bulletin board, a forum, RSS feeds, a guest book, a shopping cart, or many other user interactive services they are all available through us.
