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I don't have a web
site yet. Am I too late?
Not by a long way. Definitive figures are almost impossible to
obtain, but estimates of the number of UK businesses with a web site
vary between 50% and 80%.
This means that there are an awful lot of
businesses out there without a web site. By having your own site you
will definitely be getting ahead of a good number of your
competitors.
If it is 'my' domain name, why is it only included for the first year?
It is not possible to own a domain name outright. Periodically,
everybody has to re-register their domain names and pay a
fee. At present a .co.uk domain name costs about £5 a year. We can
look after this for you. It is possible to register a name for up to
ten years, but we recommend doing it annually.
The domain registrar will send an
email after about ten months reminding us that the name is due for
renewal. You will always get first option of registering your name
for another year.
If, after the first year, you wish
to take control of your own domain name renewal, we will happily
show you how to do it.
Will I have
to change my email address?
No. Included in your price are five email addresses. You can pick
whatever names you want. For instance if your new domain name is
fredbloggs.net, you can choose any five prefixes, such as
mail@fredbloggs.net,
fred@fredbloggs.net,
info@fredbloggs.net,
etc. You still continue to use your existing email address as usual.
We simply set things up so that when somebody sends mail to
mail@fredbloggs.net it gets forwarded to your existing email address. It's that simple.
By the way,
fredbloggs.net is
available if you want it!
Can I have
.COM
instead of .CO.UK?
Yes, of course you can. The annual registration fee of a .com domain
name is currently about £10 more than a .co.uk name, so if you want
to upgrade (and the name is available) that's no problem.
You can also choose from the
following domain suffixes:
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.net |
Originally designed to be
used by internet service providers, web designers and
the like, but now anybody can use a
.net name if they wish.
£15 a year. |
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.org |
Can be
used by charities and non-profit making organizations.
Not suitable for a personal or business web site.
Originally designed to be used by worldwide
organizations. £15 a year. |
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.org.uk |
Suitable for use by
charities and non-profit making organizations based in
the UK. The good news is that a .org.uk
name is considerably cheaper than a
.org name.
£5 a year. |
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.eu |
Available
for any business based in the European Union. Be careful
with this one - it can look a bit grandiose if you don't
have a good European customer base.
£15 a year. |
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.tv |
Available to all. You
don't need to own a television channel in order to have
one of these. As streaming video becomes more easily
available, more people are using this name.
£40 a year. |
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.biz |
As the
name suggests, suitable for any business web site. If
the name of your business is available, it's worth
reserving one of these. £15 a
year. |
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.info |
A simple, cheap, memorable
option, but better suited to non-business sites.
£5 a year. |
How does
Hosting work?
Your web site need to be stored (or 'hosted') on a server, which is
a large-capacity computer, big enough to store large numbers of web
pages and make them available for you and I to view on the web.
Server operators charge for the space your site takes up. At present
a typical hosting package costs about £30 a year.
At Stratford Web Design, we own a
large chunk of hosting space, and we will host your site free of
charge for the first year.
What if I want to
make changes to my site?
You will almost certainly want to make small changes occasionally,
and might want to add new pages later. Any minor tweaks in the first
six months are included in the price of your site. After that we
will be delighted to carry out any further modifications. A small
update (for instance the addition of a new event, or a new item for
sale) can be done for as little as £20. A complete new page will
start at around £40.
Can I do any of
this myself?
If you would like to learn how to do any of your web site's updates
or take control of your own administrative/technical duties, we can
train you how to do it. We also provide a complete telephone support
service.
You might want to consider our
CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM. This is a fiendishly clever piece of
software which enables you to update your web site from your own
computer. We install it for you and show you how to use it. If you
can use Microsoft Word, you can use the Content Management System.
The cost of this is £279, and you will never need to pay for web
site updates ever again.
Can I bring my
existing web site to Stratford Web Design?
We often get enquiries from people who already have a site, but are
dissatisfied with it in some way. We will happily take control of
your domain name, hosting, updates, or anything else related to your
site. Give us a call for further details.
Any queries not
covered here?
Please feel free to give us a call. Alternatively, fill in the form
below then click 'submit'. (If you are wondering, yes you can have a
form just like this one on your site, and it's included in the
price.)
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