GENERAL QUESTIONS


We service Australia wide. All work is done remotely and we never come on site. We believe 99% of clients would prefer to save on an expense that is not necessary.
Please see our Contact Details page for current hours of operation. You can always contact us via our community forum and quite often your post will be attended to after hours (although we do not guarantee it).
You can either contact us and arrange for a consultation time or you can make a booking on our website. 
Booking times are the normal working week. We do not work on public holidays.
Extra fees will apply. Duplicating artwork is very expensive so you would be advised to supply your artwork by tracking down the originals from the author. If necessary we can also work with your printing/graphics firm to arrange this.
You are receiving a Content Management System (CMS). This system is designed to put you in control of managing the content of your site. We use this system because it is the cheapest and most functional way to provide a website.
Essentially there are no limitations beyond your budget however we are not in the business of developing high end customised sites. As such, we will refer you to an appropriate supplier already existing in this market space.
  • Instantly publish
  • Unlimited pages
  • Update articles on your own
  • Display Videos
  • Display Images
  • Display Menus
  • Polls
  • Newsfeeds
  • Site Search
  • Contact Us Pages
  • Staff Info Pages
  • Invaluable web statistics and feedback
  • …and more  
We do not provide any material that is licensed incorrectly so please don’t ask. We will delete any illegal content we be become of aware of if found on our hosting service.
We are not lawyers and we are not the best people to ask however for the kinds of sites that we do, we not aware of nor had any issues in the past.
No.


CONTENT


In most cases you do. There are some limitations however we will explain those if you ask for things which can't be done. A rule of thumb is to keep things simple. The more complex your requests the more revisions you need and the more revisions you need the more your site will cost. (You only get one free revision).  

Note that you are entirely responsible for the content of your site unless you ustilise our content management services.

We will however add content which you supply in the initial phase of website creation. In this instance the best method to get content to us is to email it.

You will be given a login and password to access your administration section of the website. In here you will be able to add and edit content to as many pages as you have time for. Once we have received payment and your website is fully live you will also be given access to training material demonstrating how this is done.
We do not do copy writing unless you take advantage of our content authoring service.
No. Not unless you wish to take advantage of our content authoring service
As many as you like up to your hosting space limit, typically this means 1000's, but you can purchase more space if you like.
Yes. You can put videos on your website.
Yes. You can put images on your website. If you need custom images or diagrams made we can do this for you if you take advantage of our content authoring service.
In short, no, not for your content after the initial web design is complete. We do however provide some clipart and professional stock photography in the process of developing your site as we often purchase licensed images from www.istockphoto.com.
Yes. We can put a Google maps section on your site. Most people like this on their contact us page.
Yes it can, however the expense to automate the process is out of many small business' reach. Usually it is done manually. If you need this done please ask us for a quote letting me know which accounting package you use.
Yes. Note however that this is simply a matter of using our Content Management System, it is simple and you can do this yourself. We can help you with this if necessary however you will need to book a consultation.  


PRESALES


Unfortunately web design is complex. To get an accurate quote we will need to consult with you as to your requirements. To obtain a quote please book a consultation session.
We allocate a verbal phone consultation with new clients to discuss the issues involved in setting up a website. This is a free consultation. Consultation beyond this initial 30 minutes will be charged at my standard hourly rate. To book this consultation you will need to sign up at the booking form or alternatively send us an email or call us. Note that we generally do consultations on Friday as the remainder of the week gets allocate to uninterrupted work.
30 minutes.
No. All work is done remotely.
Yes. If you cannot make a decision after the free consultation we can not deal with you unless you wish to pay upfront my standard hourly fee.
In regards to content, yes you can. In regards to layout and aspects of your web design, no. With our Content Management System you will be able to edit all the content on your site with a little training. (It's not too different from working with Microsoft Word). Training material is provided for all my paying customers. If you wish to make changes to the layout or design aspects of your site please contact me for a consultation and quote.
Yes you do, we take care of this in the prototype phase of the development process.
We sell domain names as part of our services. If you do not already have one you will be quoted along with the rest of your required services. See the technical portion of the FAQ for further information on exactly what a domain is. In short some examples of a domain name are; google.com, careware.com.au or slashdot.org.
There are certain things you can do to try and purchase domain names off an existing owner. Our advice is to choose another as it can be an expensive and disappointing exercise. If you wish to go that route try www.sedo.com who offers these facilities. Unfortunately we cannot assist you with this process.
Yes. You will however need to point it to your our name servers via your registrar.


POSTSALES


Once we have published your site there are many things you can change of your own accord without having web design knowledge. These things include text and content of articles, menu structures, images, prices, orders and more. What you will not be able to change are complex things such as the layout of your site or the way your site functions. If you need these things done you will need to contact us for a quote on making the desired changes.
You can do this no problem. Simply ask for a quote.

Verbal consultation is always charged at our standard hourly rate and will be required to be booked into our allocated portions (much like a dentist except without the pain). We do not make ourselves available for random support calls because it is not efficient or cost effective for us to do so. Please also be aware that even if your question only takes 5 minutes to answer you will be billed for the full consultation hour.

If you do not wish to pay for consultation or only have short answer questions the best place to get it is in our community forum.

We do our utmost to produce work that is free of bugs however it is almost inevitable that some occasionally leak through the gaps. We fix bugs free of charge up to 15 days after site delivery.


WEBSITE MARKETING


SPONSORED PAY PER CLICK
The easiest way is to pay for sponsorship with a Google Adwords campaign. The costs involved vary depending on the keywords you are targeting and can range from 10 cents through to $5 per click and higher. 

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION

The other way involves carefully editing the content of your site so that Google's robot ranks you highly for certain chosen keywords. This technique requires constant monitoring. Google frequently change their metrics and the web is constantly changing. There are a multitude of techniques we use to get you to the top of Google which is out of the scope of this FAQ. Suffice it to say that is not an exact science and no one can guarantee specific results.

There are numerous ways to advertise your website; for high volume, common and internet competitive services it is often necessary to pay for sponsored advertising with search engines. For example to optimise your website for the keyword 'SEX' is so competitive it is next to futile trying and results are a lottery at best. For non competitive keywords search engine optimisation is a more cost effective route. You can combine both these methods for the best result.
We only offer a no frills SEO service which is usually ample good enough for 90% of customers. We use all the low cost techniques which don’t cost an arm and a leg and will monitor your site for success. If after careful monitoring the no frills approach fails to give the results desired, more expensive, specialised and intense SEO services can be greatly beneficial. In these instances we recommend contacting a specialist search engine optimisation company.
By using our CMS you can configure newsletters and mass mailing features for your customers. This is the easiest way to notify your customers of many things about your business. Please note however that mass mailings can be abused and your hosting account does have an acceptable use policy.
 
You will receive traffic reports stating exactly what your traffic was like before starting out with us and how it has progressed since. You will also be able to see where your site's traffic is coming from and how best to capitalise on it. These reports will allow you to quantify and determine your ROI (Return on investment)

 

TECHNICAL


We test on the latest versions of Safari, Chrome, Opera, Firefox and IE7 and IE8. These browsers cater to 99% of the website viewing market and we guarantee our sites will work flawlessly on these browsers. My sites will usually work on other browsers regardless, however as testing for these browsers is cost restrictive to most of my customers we do not do it and offer no guarantees.  
By default, at this stage we do not provide any consideration on our websites for catering to those with special accessibility needs. If you require your site to have these features please consult with me as to the expenses involved and we will do our utmost to provide what we can.

Security is no joke. There are 1000's of young miscreants all over the world. Some of them have computers and some of them like to break things.

With billions of people in the world and billions of websites, even though your site might be an innocent harmless baby, chances are that one day someone will try and hack yours. Please check this site out for information on security.

We subscribe to all the security suggestions listed there however we make no guarantees other than to state that we take security seriously, our hosting is backed up daily and every reasonable action is taken to prevent bad things happening. This does NOT guarantee bad things won’t happen as similar to physical security even if we lock the doors, put padlocks on, keep updated to the latest security techniques the determined can still get in.  
If you care about your data, yes, you do need to back up your website! If you are hosting your website with me we do perform backups on a daily basis however if data loss is your fault, it will cost you money for us to restore it. As the golden rule with computers is that things go wrong, always, without fail. We do NOT and can not guarantee anything. The best way to ensure that your data is safe is to perform your own backups.
A domain name is the human readable 'address' that points to your website. Examples of a domain are google.com, telstra.com.au or slashdot.org.

 

HOSTING


Hosting is a computer connected to the internet that runs your website. These computers run 24 hours per day and are managed to make sure they are continuaoulsy operational.

No. We do however highly recommend that you do for a few reasons which are as follows;

  • We know our hosting, we know it works, we have tested and implemented many sites on our host, we know them like the back of our hands. We choose our host because it is the best.
  • We do not know other hosts like we do our own, they are different and differences can cause unforeseen bugs and problems which costs money.
  • You have one point of contact (us) for fixing any issues that arise with your website. Sometimes web design issues overlap with hosting issues and this can cause complications if two parties are involved.
  • It can take hours of work to sort through the issues involved with differences in hosting providers. We need to bill you for these hours.
  • We know our host to be reliable and secure. We cannot advise accurately on other hosts as there are thousands of them and we have not used all of them extensively.

These reasons are why we charge a site transfer fee if you wish to use your own choice of hosting services.

Please see our schedule of fees/order form.
For external hosting of your choice you will need to discuss that with your provider. Note also that if you decide to use your own choice of external hosting services there is a site transfer fee involved.
There is extra labour involved in moving a prototype site from our testing servers to another. Many issues can arise with different and unfamiliar hosts. Security needs to be checked out, configurations need to be checked, domains need to be redirected, file permissions need to be checked and your site needs to be thoroughly rechecked for general bugs. This all takes time and knowledge which we need to be compensated for.
Yes, you can have up to 10 POP email addresses with your hosting account.
You do not need to configure your hosting. Our hosting is a managed service and we will do everything for you.
We set up your initial addresses as requested on the order form when creating your site. Adding or changing is as simple as sending us a support request and I we will action the modifications you need within 24 hours.
We partner with Netlogistics who have data centers in Sydney, Australia. We use them because they are lightning fast and provide the level of service that is required for our customers. They are not cheap in comparison with some hosts however the raw speed their servers provide is worth every penny.
Any wise business owner knows that slow sites quickly send customers packing. A few dollars extra per month is easily worth the peace of mind quality servers provide.
We have two plans available. One for high volume and one for low volume. Please see the pricing/quote pages for this information.
You will not need to know how to configure your hosting as we manage this aspect of your website for you.


ADMINISTRATION & BILLING


All work is invoiced immediately upon commencement of a project. In some instance we do invoice post completion of work however if this is the case it will be documented in your contractual agreement.

All invoices are billed via credit card on a zero term immediate basis. We do not accept any other method. We will also not publish or release updates or new sites until we have been paid in full.

For recurring bills such as web hosting or search engine marketing contracts your credit card will automatically be billed on a monthly basis and if for any reason payment fails hosting will automatically be stopped (after reasonable warning).
 
Simply because it helps us keep our prices competitive and takes away the overhead of chasing slow payers. By taking payment this way we have less administrative overhead and reduce bad debt.

This makes good business sense and it allows us to pass on the savings to our customers in the form of a more competitive price.
 
Unfortunately we will not deal with you. Credit cards are easy to get and we are yet to meet a legitimate business who does not have one.
Our standard hourly fee is $150+GST. Occasionally we will lower this for large jobs or consultation spanning many hours (as large jobs don’t have the overheads small jobs do). This may seem expensive but please be aware that usually for every hour of standard work there is another which we cannot bill for.
New customers get an initial 30 minute session of consultation for free. Any consultation after that will always be charged at our standard hourly rate in minimum hourly blocks.
Apart from the free initial consultation all fees will be billed directly on conclusion of the interview via credit card.