About Us
The onehouse.net team has been designing and developing websites and web applications since 2000. We operate with a network of contractors in a virtual office environment, which keeps operating costs to a bare minimum and allows us to be extremely competitive with our labor rates. While we specialize in websites and web applications, the core competencies of the individuals in our network are varied and extensive. As a result, we are able to take care of most of our clients' design and development needs, all under one roof at onehouse.net.
Design Philosophy
To us, usability is the most important aspect of web and application design. Websites and web applications are about retrieving and/or interacting with information. A successful design makes this as easy and painless as possible. An interface should be clean, functional, and require a minimum of thought for users to accomplish what they are trying to do.(1) It is also important for us to clearly communicate our clients' brand messages in a way that is visually compelling to each site's target audience, while at the same time conveying a level of clean professionalism.
1. Most of our feelings about usability in web design are expressed beautifully by Steve Krug in his book, "Don't Make Me Think." It's a quick read, and we highly recommend it for anyone involved in a web design project.
Development Philosophy
Mature open source technologies have proven time and again to be more secure, easier to develop with, and of a higher quality than their proprietary counterparts, all while costing a fraction of the price. Because of these benefits, we primarily develop websites and applications using industry standard open source technologies like Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP. We write clean, well documented code; and whenever possible, we adhere to accepted development approaches and standards so that that any developer familiar with these technologies and standards could understand and add onto what we have developed.