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Flagstaff, Ariz., Web Design Firm Lands Contract for Judicial Research Project

Posted on: Monday, 15 August 2005, 21:00 CDT

Aug. 14--The information technology age makes most anything possible, and Thorhost, a local Web site design firm, is relishing in the fact: The trio of partners recently landed a contract to design a survey Web site for an international justice research project based in Manhattan.

"Fifteen years ago there was no way that a firm in Flagstaff could have gotten a contract like that," said business partner Tim Cunningham, who's responsible for sales and marketing and is the client's point of contact.

Thorhost also has gigs in Washington, D.C., California and Phoenix, and partners Cunningham, Jeff Thorsett and Jeff Falbo are looking to expand their national presence.

"We want to be, and we are very good at large-scale development," Cunningham said. So far, the company's landed about 50 clients solely through word-of-mouth marketing.

It was Flagstaff buzz coupled with recommendations from contacts that sparked an invitation for Thorhost to bid on The Depravity Standard research site, which seeks to impact international justice by quantifying such terms as "heinous" and "depraved" so sentencing in crimes of that nature can be more uniform. With about three years experience as an "on-the-side" business, the trio of a restaurant owner and two bartenders won the Manhattan bid.

While Thorsett, who is responsible for the programming and back-end databases, describes the project as his "hairiest" so far, a successful site will surely lead to more work nationally, and possibly internationally.

Thorhost's contract asks the company to not only create a survey site for the third phase of the project that is less-academic than the existing version, it allows almost an infinite number of people to take it. The new pages also are required to work with the code written previously for the project. Thorhost's database must mesh with the existing so the two query each other to track who has taken the surveys, as well as provide real-time statistics and geographic distribution of survey-takers.

The site will be online in less than a month, taking a total of six to eight weeks to complete.

Meanwhile, the business partners aren't forgetting about their local presence, and want to use it to their advantage while boosting other local businesses.

"Yeah we want to serve local clients," Cunningham said. "We recognize that Flagstaff is where we live," and they want to be the Web site design firm on the tip of everyone's tongue.

"We want people to say, 'Oh, you at least got to talk to Thorhost,'" Cunningham said.

The company has two main components: custom designed sites, and personal Web sites that use WordPress publishing platform.

With each custom-designed site, Cunningham goes through the "discovery" process with the client to determine the target audience, selling points and tone the business wants to market.

"We spend a lot of time up front with them to determine their goals," he said. Then Thorsett writes the code and Falbo does graphic design and ensures the sight is visually aesthetic.

The three-heads-are-better-than-one process enables Thorhost to produce sites that have "drastic" differences, rather than using the same tricks for each, Cunningham said.

The second component of the business is to enable more individuals to have a Web presence through a personal site without the pop-ups and ads that come along with some of the free domain names.

According to a Pew survey, about 87 percent of teens are online today, but less than 20 percent have a personal Web site, Cunningham said.

People often spend $50 to $60 a month for cell phones, so the Thorhost partners think many people would be interested in their own domain at less than $10 a month. The sites will have several optional plug-ins, like one for the weather and local news, and the ability to file share songs from MP3 players and photos. They also can be updated remotely by e-mailing text to the site, which is posted automatically.

And when something goes wrong with any Thorhost site, clients can take comfort in knowing they can physically track someone down.

"When your Web site goes down, you can walk down to our cave and find us as opposed to calling India," Cunningham said.

INSIDE THORHOST

--What: Custom-designed business or personal Web sites built and maintained locally.

--Who: Thorhost partners are Jeff Thorsett, Tim Cunningham and Jeff Falbo.

--Where: Thorhost.com; 13 N. San Francisco St. Suite 9; 853-0915.

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Copyright (c) 2005, The Arizona Daily Sun, Flagstaff

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: The Arizona Daily Sun

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