All our sites are programmed with PHP, which is a very reliable, and easy to work with, web programming language.
PHP can be used from anything to simply including a small piece of a webpage, to dynamically generating a menu/navigation system, to the full generation of your webpage, often together with a database program like MySQL.
We use as little Javascript as possible, for the simple reason that there is no way to know if your site's users will have their Javascript support enabled or not. There is no way you can make a feature work that needs Javascript if it is disabled.
We never make page functionality depend on Javascript, for example, the drop menus on our navigation bar are not required to navigate the site, but are simply a small aid. This is how we approach all javascripting of features.
Now that we have helped you put together the basic site map (the information architecture of the site, navigation etc.), and you have assembled as much content for your web pages, and approved the design, your site is very close to being ready.
Once we have all these components, it usually only takes 1-2 weeks to get your site online, unless there is a major programmed component.
We try to anticipate your needs in this process. If you will be adding a great deal of new content, on an ongoing basis, we will make the pages much more dynamic, while if you are making a fairly simple, infrequently updated site, we will use less.
The one thing that we have found is that it is always better to plan for growth in advance, and that is how we make all our sites. It is much easier to update a site that is designed from the ground up to be modified than it is to update a site that was just thrown together with little thought for the future (what most so-called web designers do, that is).
Almost all our sites are built with ease of maintainance in mind. This means that we create a basic template, then, using web programming, create modules and dynamically generated page elements, especially navigation, and shared page design components*.
One of the major factors that will determine which techniques we use will depend on who is going to maintain your site after we build it. If it is going to be someone else, we tend to make it simpler, since it's not very easy to find good HTML/PHP people.
* We have seen this process called 'Object Oriented' web design. This is a totally inaccurate use of the term. 'Object Oriented' is a programming term that has nothing to do with including chunks of webpages, but has for some reason become fashionable among web designers.
After the pages are all done, the programming is in place, and you have viewed a sample, we are ready to put the site up live. This is the easiest part of the process, although it also of course the point where many errors are discoverd, and corrected, since you can actually read the real thing, live, online.