Our approach to programming is modular and object-orientated. All of our programming is created with extensibility in mind. Most of our programming is built on frameworks, which allows us to do more, to a higher standard in less time. We have our own content management framework, which allows us to build any form on content management on strong foundations. We do not create anything that uses systems or pre-built packages; quite simply because they are inflexible, difficult to maintain and we would not insult our client's confidence in us by giving them something we have just downloaded for free (not pointing any fingers). You'd be surprised at the number of 'development companies' that charge an arm and a leg for lightly modified pre-built packages and a £20 template.

Web development is broken down into two areas: front-end development and back-end development. Front-end developers are a mix of a designer and a back-end developer. They are responsible for turning designs into a web site, user interface and JavaScript widgets. Back-end developers generally have no artistic ability and have not seen the light of day since they first turned on a computer. They spend their spare time watching Star Trek and coding Nintendo DS emulators. Back-end developers are responsible for programming into existence all the functions of your web site that it's users will experience but never see - XML parsers, elaborate product databases, eCommerce integrations etc.

The first stage of front-end development is to turn a design or set of designs into HTML and CSS. The majority of web developers will simply use a WYSIWYG editor like Dreamweaver to put your site into HTML. This is little more difficult than using Microsoft Word and results in an unprofessional end product. Web sites that have been constructed in a WYSIWYG editor will suffer from all of the following:

Messy and bulky code, which is difficult to update and maintain

Pages will not be geared for search engine optimisation

Updates to the site will cause degradation to already low quality HTML

HTML will be inflexible and suffer from accessibility issues, reducing your target audience

Contain numerous coding errors, which can cause cross-browser incompatibility and confuse search engines, again reducing your target audience

Only makes use of a fraction of HTML and CSS

At Web Enhancements every single page is hand-coded using scaleable, semantic, keyword-rich HTML. This means:

Our code is clean & minimal, resulting in pages that are easy to manage and update

HTML is constructed in a way to best inform search engines what that page is about

HTML is scaleable, meaning any content can be changed to fit any requirements and the size of the site can be increased infinitely without degradation purposes)

HTML and CSS is provided free of errors and compatible with major web browsers

Web site will be compatible with all screen resolutions

Just to give you an idea, 1% would be a liberal estimate of the number of sites on the internet that have a solid HTML foundation. In our opinion HTML is the easiest part of making a web site. So if so many development companies can't get that right what else are they going to do half-heartedly?

Once your site has been meticulously put into HTML, the next stage is to add features and facilities to the user interface. This consists of constructing light effects, such as the menu at the top of this page.

Once a project has been through front-end development it is handed over to a back-end developer. This is the stage where all the 'behind the scenes' work goes on - the front-end of the site is connected to programming functions and databases that will make the web site actually work.