If you have questions,
we have answers.
Sometimes
the most complex problem
has a simple solution
Web building is a specialist skill, let us
support your project with 18 years experience and service.
If you have questions,
we have answers.
Sometimes
the most complex problem
has a simple solution
Web building is a specialist skill let us
support your project with 18 years experience and service.
GENERAL QUESTIONS
During the years we have been designing and building client websites, we hear the same questions many times over. It's in our interest to provide you with information to help us achieve your required goal. We note that other web providers favour telling you it's all quick and easy and omit the thorny details about writing the content and provisioning images and artwork. We know these matters make a site work or fail, so it's our duty to ensure your success which is why we help you fully prepare.
If you're building a website from scratch, you'll need a domain name. You may already have a domain name that is unused or pointing to another website. We'll cover these options later.
To buy a domain name you need to go to a registrar. We use and recommend LCN.com - a UK company that provides good reliable service without too many unwanted trimmings. A domain is like a user friendly name plate you use to find and navigate your website.
If you already have a domain name and want to use it for your new website, we can login to your existing registrar and redirect the domain to connect with the new site. If that domain is already connected to another site, it will cease to work because it now has no identifier. We have written more about how to choose a domain name in our how to design and build a website
It's not essential for your website to connect to an email account, but in 99% of times you'll want at least one email account for us to communicate with you, as well as receive notifications from the website you are running. You can use any email account you want, providing it's active and reliable. We generally do NOT publish email address on the website, as this is an invitation for spammers. Instead we provide an online contact form(s) that automatically sends the details from the form to your email address. No one can see the email address it's being sent to, not even by reading the source code. We also use anti-spam mechanisms to reduce 'bot email' and other rubbish in your inbox.
Many domain name registrars provide at least one free email account per domain name. Our preferred registrar LCN.com will do this. We undertake to setup this one account for you at the registrar, when we login to connect your domain to the website, but you will need to configure your local email client such as outlook express, in order to read and write emails. Free email accounts may have limited storage space, so be cautious about leaving old emails in your archive of read items, especially if they have image attachments. They take up space VERY quickly.
Because we maintain and update the software, your website will last indefinitely. That's not to say it won't need a major rebuild, or overhaul at some point in the future. Most clients want a refresh after a period of time and we're happy to engage with this. Because we do regular software updates and maintenance, the actual core codebase will never become obsolete or unusable. It's a flexible evolving system, but it does need maintaining.
We offer a full range of social media services. These range from adding share and follow icons to your site's pages and posts, to full social media management and training. We can also add autoposting of website blog posts to your social media streams, so that everything you blog about can be transferred in condensed format to any stream. We also offer the reverse service; this is where your posts on facebook, or twitter are automatically transferred as posts to your website!
Social media services are extra on standard costs. Please inquire.
We've been building websites for twenty years. During the early days we worked in a small team of developers to ascertain the best way to build a website. We trialled all of the major platforms and some of the smaller minor ones also. After many tests and analysis, we firmly favoured WordPress. At that time WordPress had just been spawned from B2, a predecessor of the now world famous platform. Despite a great result from WordPress the study team disbanded and we did our own further development work with Drupal and XOOPS with Richard soon becoming the major documentation writer for the XOOPS project. Neither of those major platform really hit the mark in terms of design, security and functionality. We soon moved back to WordPress and dedicated our time and skills to build a full working knowledge of the system. We never looked back, despite odd forays into other 'interesting web projects' we noticed some of the long term and enduring qualities of the WP system, such as the constant support, updates, huge following of third party developers and and an ever growing popularity with users.
Yes to both. Accelerated Mobile pages (AMP) is a Google initiative to speed up web browsing experience for mobile users, as well as remove a lot of the superfluous content from a website that is purely cosmetic. https://www.ampproject.org/
Building a website that is AMP enabled has many benefits if you are running a news site and publishing articles regularly. There are several limitations to how we design and functionalise your website, so this is a features you should include early in your brief, so that we can advise you of the requirements, extra costs and design
We offer a full Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) service that focuses on making your website both easier to be indexed by search engines, plus increase the website visibility in search engine results. This service is especially useful when you want high page ranking in Google and other search engines to increase traffic to the site. Commercial websites that depend on sales and publicity should always maximise SEO potential. Again you should raise this early in your enquiry to ensure we build appropriate support for SEO functions.
CUSTOM BUILD WEBSITES
Custom built sites give you more flexibility in design, layout, page additions, extra functions, style and design improvements, greater content SEO, access to eCommerce online shops and many more bespoke features. In addition , we extend our availability to the client for greater communication, feedback, and refinement of design and build. Custom build sites are for the client who wants a full on website experience and has the budget to pursue quality and refinement.
Yes you can. There are no restrictions for custom build websites. If there is approved software to achieve the function you want, we can configure this into your site. The only criteria we use is based on WordPress' best practices that constrains us to use official software, without modifications. Software is a constantly evolving medium and security must be maintained at all times. Plus, we need to maintain your site without having to re-write code for every update.
We will also advise you about different features and functions from the ground up. Why do you want this feature, what will it do, who will benefit, does it bring a better user experience, will it impact negatively on other software already running, is there a better alternative? These are questions we discuss with you and provide solutions as part of the custom build experience that you are paying for, which is not included in a five day website.
It depends on whether you want a full shopping facility, or just a few items which can be purchased with a PayPal button. There is an extra charge for adding full shopping cart as this requires extra configuration and content additions. Please let us know your requirements and we can advise you of extra costs.
Yes you can. We can install a blog system on your website where you can run a regular update easily. Blogs can be divided into categories, sections and offer a comment system from your users, allowing writer/ reader interactions. We can also set up a blog to publish posts via emails that are sent from your smartphone, including images. Not only that but we can provide regular, fresh content if you don't have time to run a blog yourself.
Our standard hosting and maintenance packages start at £30.00 per month. This covers your regular maintenance and website updates. It also includes daily backups. £1 per day keeps you worry free with a site that will always perform efficiently and maintained with software and security updates whenever required.
If at any time you want to upgrade your site, or add new features, we can do this and it won't affect your maintenance charge. If you want to add an ecommerce shop or booking system to the site, your maintenance charge will increase to £40 or £50 per month as more configurations are required.
As a custom build website client, we extend our full services and experience to achieving the best design and functions you require. Sometimes you have a basic idea of how you want your site to be, its identity and purpose, but need to gain more clarity in forming those ideas and landing the vision into a workable project. This usually overlaps into brand identity, marketing goals and product placement. This stage of a website build is often the most important part as it also helps the client to really understand purpose and direction. We are always very happy to advise and assist in the grounding process and it helps us to provide a clearer interpretation of requirements for your website.
Our answer here is divided! Technically, it's very easy. If you have put a comment on a social media site, you can write a blog post and publish it. That's the easy part. The hard part is maintaining the blogging, and writing consistent high quality posts that are compelling reading for your visitors and search engine relevant. How to do that is a big subject that can't be explained in a couple of paragraphs.
So, yes you can run a blog and you can even post a blog article to your site from your mobile device and publish it on the web. Take a couple of pics or a video and that too can adorn your blog article, making it look professional and interesting. We can help with consulting, training and even blog writing if you need it.
As discussed in other FAQs, we restrict access to full administration access. However, if you want to manage the site yourself, we can seamless transfer the site installation to your own WPEngine account (you will have to set one up) where you will have full access to all admin areas. If you choose to do this, we are no longer obliged to fix, repair, modify or work on the site on your behalf without assessing the work and levying charges.
WEBSITE SECURITY
WordPress has 50-60% share of the global CMS market – making it the most popular CMS. New York Observer, New York Post, TED, Thought Catalog, Williams, USA Today, CNN, Fortune.com, TIME.com, National Post, Spotify, TechCrunch, CBS Local, NBC, and more all use WordPress. WordPress powers 14.7% of top 100 websites in the world. We could go on...The answer to the question is NO. WordPress is extremely secure because it is constantly maintained and updated. More importantly, Gloucestershire webs designs uses a secure server that maintains server security at 100% effectiveness.
Choose WordPress with confidence, the world's most popular Content Management System!
It has to be that way! Memorable passwords are easily guessed, hacked, abused and lead to an insecure website. The WordPress system will not allow you to create an easy password, so don't even try. We use machine generated passwords like *9)5FhggK-==!nVyff4* Your password will be constructed from something like that. We suggest you use a password manager if you need to login to your site frequently. If you store a password in a file somewhere, you can copy past it into the password field along with your username, however, be careful never to copy spaces before or after the password characters, as this will create a failed login.
We use WP Engine for all our websites. This is a high end specialist WordPress hosting server that manages all aspects of security by their in house personnel. Several security protocols are built into their service, to prevent any type of intrusions. They also undertake immediate cleanup of any problems that may occur. In addition all websites are fully backed up every 24 hours and provide a seamless restore should anything go wrong. We also use Cloudflare as a pass-though proxy to add even greater security and speed benefits. The only thing we can't control or protect against is when clients give access to administration of their website to third parties. We strongly discourage you doing this without checking with us first. Yes, we can restore your site if things go wrong, but save yourself the trouble and play safe.
If you forget your username or password, you won't be able to login to your site. The simplest thing to do is click the 'lost your password' link under the login screen and request a new password. You do have to monitor the email address used to register for the website and a reset email will be sent to you. Click the link in the email to generate a new password. This together with your username will now be your new logins. The generated password will be long, complex and unmemorable, so please store this safely and don't share it with anyone.
SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is an extra security layer providing a secure data protection between 2 machines. Typically, this is your web browser and the server that you are sending/receiving data to and from. SSL is now superseded by a better protocol called TLS (transport layer security). TLS is still often referred to by the old term SSL.
What are the benefits of SSL or TLS?
- Encryption: protect data transmissions (e.g. browser to server, server to server, application to server, etc.)
- Authentication: ensure the server you’re connected to is actually the correct server.
- Data integrity: ensure that the data that is requested or submitted is what is actually delivered.
How do I know I have SSL/ TLS working?
You will know if you have a secure connection between your browser and the website server by seeing HTTPS:// instead of the usual; HTTP:// in the browser address bar. You will also see a padlock displayed as a small prefix icon.
Why are some sites showing an orange padlock instead of green?
Usually this is because there are some assets, such as images that are not 'secure' This can happen if a site gets converted from HTTP to HTTPS and some images are still addressed by the old protocol. Also, some images may be be addressed to serve your pages from another server that is not HTTPS. Technically, this will lower the protection of HTTPS and hence the orange padlock instead of the green version.
From a security aspect we say 'the less people that have access to your site administration section the better' Too many cooks in the kitchen can cause chaos and we don't want to be the ones to have to clean up the mess.
WordPress has a a system of 'ROLES' and this is the best way to implement flexibility while maintaining secure permissions to lock down areas that can provide access to inexperienced people.
As a rule we retain Administrator access, meaning no-one else except Gloucestershire Web Designs has access to the code functions of the website. Things like plugins, themes, design layout and global settings are all out of reach. We do this to protect your site from mishaps and experiments that might go wrong. If you really want to make big changes, reach out to us, that's our job, in the same way that you wouldn't try to add an extension on your house, you go to someone experienced and capable of doing the work correctly and efficiently.
Beneath the ADMIN role, there are EDITOR and CONTRIBUTOR roles that we are happy to allow site owners to work in. Here you can login, write and edit blog posts, make minor changes to page content and authorise comments on your blog. If you run a shop, we can also extend the SHOP MANAGER role to you, providing you are competent with how to use the shop administration.
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a legal framework that sets guidelines for the collection and processing of personal information of individuals within the European Union (EU). Personal information and data is considered anything that can personally identify you from other people. This regulation is now in force and affects all forms of business and organisations that receive, processes and stores personal information. This includes websites that use cookies to track your browsing habits and help your website experiences.
The GDPR applies to this website and we display an acceptance notice at the bottom of the site as well as a full privacy policy page detailing who we are, why we collect information and what we do with it.
If you run a website yourself, you will almost definitely have to provide a similar system in order to comply with GDPR. We provide all you need to do this as part of the build process, so don't worry. It's all in the service!
More details on GDPR can be found on the website here
START-UP WEBSITES
Start-up websites are for the client who has a limited budget for website presence, but may want to develop and extend the website at a later date. Or, they may not fully know the direction or flavour of the website and need time to garner feedback, evolve their project and develop a forward plan for further development. Start-up websites are in no way inferior or limited in any way, but their content and delivery will be highly focused and limited to the salient requirements of the project. At any time you can upgrade your start-up website by adding new pages, features and functionality.
Upgrade prices are not fixed but calculated on the features you require.
Start-up websites are geared towards beginners, or clients on a fixed budget and also the emerging project that needs time to establish the way forward. Generally we give you as much access as your skill level allows. But we are protective over the initial build and design stage. We provide an 'assisted build' service for both start-up websites and custom build sites. That means we manage all the technical aspects of your website design, functions and maintenance. The advantage to you is we do things the right way on your behalf, we give sound advice for making decisions and you benefit from our extensive experience. This model gives you limited control, but geared to protect your asset from mistakes that you might other wise make. Can you install and delete plugins, and themes? No, because we work from a curated list of software addons and we don't want to have to bill you to put things right after a problem occurs. Can you change texts, run a blog, add pages and images to the site after it's launched? Certainly, but we are also happy to run these services for you if you prefer.
After your site is launched and live on the internet you can login at any time and make minor text changes to most areas. We use a front-end inline text editor that allows you to simply click on a page and changes text areas to include delete and minor formatting.
Yes you can. We can install a blog system on your website where you can run a regular update easily. Blogs can be divided into categories, sections and offer a comment system from your users, allowing writer/ reader interactions. In start-up websites we do not offer a blog to publish posts via emails that are sent from your smartphone, without an additional cost.
Our standard maintenance charge is £30.00 per month. This covers your regular maintenance and website updates. It also includes daily backups and minor changes to content that you may want us to do. £1 per day keeps you worry free with a site that will always perform efficiently and maintained with software and security updates whenever required.
If at any time you want to upgrade your site, or add new features, we can do this. If you want to add an ecommerce shop or booking system to the site, your maintenance charge will increase to £40 or £50 per month as more configurations are required.
To a limited extent you can. We have answered this sort of question elsewhere here under website security where we discuss ROLES. We suggest that if you want someone else to manage a blog, for example, we would set them up as a CONTRIBUTOR, or maybe an EDITOR. This will give them login access to basic publication access to write posts, publish them and authorise comments.
As discussed in the previous FAQ, we restrict access to full administration access. However, if you want to manage the site yourself, we can seamless transfer the site installation to your own WPEngine account (you will have to set one up) where you will have full access to all admin areas. If you choose to do this, we are no longer obliged to fix, repair, modify or work on the site on your behalf without assessing the work and levying charges.
