YOUR RESPONSIBILITIES ONCE YOUR SITE IS FINISHED

Many potential clients and clients think they will have no responsibilities in regard to maintaining their site once Port City Portland Maine has completed your site and placed it on the internet for public viewing. This could not be further from the truth – YOU DO HAVE A NUMBER OF RESPONSIBILITES. All these responsibilities are easily managed and we lead your through the entire process.

Here is what Port City Portland Maine is NOT responsible for:

1. Port City Portland Maine is NOT responsible for your website (yourdomain.com) or email(name@yourdomain.com) being down due to server outages of the computer systems housing your web pages. Server downtime happens and it is a fact of computer life - but in general these outages are for short periods of time. Since we recommend Siteground to host all our companies websites your first action is to contact Siteground(www.siteground.com) via their help system.
   
   
2. Port City Portland Maine is NOT responsible for your website being down because your internet service provider, such as Time Warner Roadrunner, is having problems. If you can’t connect to the internet call your internet service provider.
   
   
3. Port City Portland Maine is NOT responsible for keeping your Siteground account information. Once you sign up for your Siteground hosting account (which we help you do), an email from Siteground will be sent to you giving you important login information for website maintenance. Please print that information out and keep it safe. We WILL guide you through this process.
   
   
4. Port City Portland Maine is NOT responsible for paying your web hosting bill. When your bill is coming due Siteground will contact you via email and you can pay it online via your management account at Siteground. If you do not pay your bill, your website will be taken down until you pay that bill - this is a standard operating procedure of web hosting companies. We WILL guide you through this process.
   
   
5. Port City Portland Maine is NOT responsible for software changes that take place at Siteground.com which may impact on your email forms(which we have programmed) or other interactive elements(which we have programmed) at your site. Siteground will inform you if changes are being made to their server software and if those changes might affect your forms and or other interactive elements of your site. If changes do take place at Siteground that will affect your interactive elements at your site it is your responsibility to inform us of those changes so we can make programming adjustments at our regular programming fees.

Here is what Port City Portland Maine IS responsible for:

1. Port City Portland Maine IS responsible for updating any errors or issues arising at your site due to our design and programming for the first 6 months after implementing your site, including any software changes that take place at Siteground.
   
   
2. Port City Portland Maine IS responsible for making any other changes that you request, on a timely basis, which is contracted between you and us at our regular fees. Often due to other commitments we cannot get to your requests immediately, unless you wish to pay an added cost due to the fact that we have to put other clients aside who contracted with us before you. But in general, if emergency changes needed to be made to your site expect that your job will take up to 24 to 48 hours depending on the degree of complication of the emergency.

You will have to set aside time to learn how to login to your Siteground account. It is a very simple process and Port City will lead you through the process.

Also, we like to have our clients learn how to set up email addresses such as tom@yourdomain.com and how to setup your email program of choice like Outlook Express that enables you to receive those emails once they have been setup at via your Siteground Control Panel. It is a very simple process and Port City will lead you through the process.

DOMAIN REGISTRATION - Price Range: $9 + per year depending on your needs. (Also possibly free if you sign up for website hosting which is the case at Siteground.com our webhosting affiliate.)

The first step in site design is choosing a domain name. Our domain name is www.portcityportlandmaine.com. We will consult with you on this process and we will help you register your domain name if it is available. If your domain name is not available, we'll help you choose an alternative.

A national "holding house" will hold your domain name registration and protect it. You are responsible to this "holding company" for a yearly fee which you will receive by mail and or email. You must pay this fee or you will lose the rights to your domain name with the ultimate result of having your website not appear on the Internet.

We work with our affiliate Siteground.com, a leading U.S. provider with 24/7 support, to register your domain name.  Once registered you can forward all your relevant information to us so we can begin the process of constructing your website.

WEB PAGE HOSTING - $70.00 + per year depending on your needs

In order for your web site to be viewed it must reside on a sophisticated computer system owned by a "Web Page Hosting Company." Their computer system is connected to the Internet which allows people to view your site. The "Hosting Services" we set up for you are through a leading U.S. provider that offer outstanding reliability, FAST download times, very fair prices, and an array of interactive software that can cost you hundreds and even thousands of dollars to implement on other web hosting providers. WE DO KNOW HOW TO SAVE YOU MONEY AND GET QUALITY SERVICE AT THE SAME TIME!

SITEGROUND IS OUR WEB HOSTING SERVICE PROVIDER OF CHOICE

 

Of course there is a fee for having your web page reside on the web hosting provider's computer system. You will be responsible for this fee and you must pay this fee on a yearly basis. You will pay DIRECTLY TO THIS WEB HOSTING PROVIDER as we take NO MIDDLE MAN CHARGES like many companies in our line of business. Payment by credit card is standard operating procedure in the Web Hosting industry.

We will assist you in the process of housing your web site once we contract with you to design your site. This is a very simple process and demands a few minutes of your time and a credit card. This assistance is included in the fee you pay us to design your site.

WEB PAGE DESIGN - Price Range: $80 + per page  depending on the sophistication of the page and how soon you want your site completed.

We can custom design your web site from start to finish, including complete art, graphic and logo design, custom backgrounds, icons and clickable buttons, copy writing, and scanning of product photos. Port City Portland Maine can incorporate elements of your existing promotional materials to enhance your current marketing campaign.

Once a price and time frame is contracted for a web site then 1/2 of the total contracted cost must be paid in advance; the second half of the total contracted price must be paid at the contracted completion time before the rights to the constructed site are passed on to you.

It is important that our customers meet their obligation to supply us with the necessary materials, i.e. text for their web pages(in a word document), graphics, photos, pdfs, videos, etc. so we can complete your site in the contracted time frame. We set aside time to finish your site and take on no more than 2 clients at a time so we can devote quality time to your needs. As you depend on us to fulfill our obligations, we depend on you to finish your site in the contracted time frame so we can fulfill our financial obligations as well as move on to our new clients.

Custom Programming, 2D and 3D Design, and Streaming Live Media - Price Range: $50 + an hour.

Custom Programming:
We can set-up your own guest books, forums(i.e. discussion boards), live chat rooms, forms, questionnaires, event calendars, online scheduling, online training software, image galleries, Live Help software, auction software, and interactive web menus. These features are uniquely designed for your web site, and in general, though not always, will be an added expense. We can consult with you in regards to these features.

2D and 3D Design:
We can customize unique designs, banners, 3D work, logos, and animation intros. We use state of the art software like Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, Freehand, Corel Draw, Flash and 3D Studio Max to do our work.

Streaming Live Media:
Audio and video can be sent live from your website. Serious consideration must be given to this type of media due to the added expense.

SITE PROMOTION - Price varies and can be very expensive.

"Top positioning on the Internet " implies that if your company deals in "legal representation", and if someone types in "legal representation" in a search engine, then your company's name will come to the top of the search engine's list. We can't guarantee this nor can anyone else EXCEPT IF YOU ARE WILLING TO PAY A FEE THAT IS USUALLY VERY HIGH AND IT IS PAID TO A MAJOR SEARCH ENGINE COMPANY LIKE GOOGLE.

Port City Portland Maine Internet Consulting and Web Design can guarantee that if someone does a web search for your company name and your company name is unique then your site will come up at the top of the search.

We can increase the probability of you placing higher in a search engine relative to your competitors because we do know some of the "tricks" that enable this to happen.   For example, go to Google Search engine and type in "embroidery and maine" without the double quotes. Note that our client, LT's inc., comes towards the top of the search.

We do not recommend our clients to pay high fees for positioning on the web. We prefer other strategies - business cards, newspaper and magazine ads, television ads, email newsletters - to maximize exposure of your Web site to your targeted audience.

REAL TIME CREDIT CARD PROCESSING AND E-COMMERCE

Price Range:
Implementation of Software and Design: $1000 +
Merchant Account & Payment Gateway: $50 + per month plus Processing charge per item sold

The ability to sell on your site can be a complicated and expensive process. It takes time and thoughtful planning. Complicated software must be set up to show your items and their prices as well as securely processing the choices that your customers make and their form of payment. We can lead you through this process which demands patience and an investment of time and money on your part.

Please take the time to view one of our online Shopping Carts that we have designed for LT's inc. and Sabre Yachts. Online shopping is one of the fastest growing businesses on the Internet. And if you are new to the world of business and have an idea for selling products on the the internet take the time to give us a call and let us explain to you how online shopping works. And for the successful on-street business an online store may be a perfect complement to your business.

Please note that we implement your own customized shopping cart on YOUR website. The shopping cart system we use is highly customizable, and is open source software which means you do not have to pay for the software. You only pay for the time it takes for us to customize and implement the features that you need to service your clients.

MAINTENANCE SERVICES - Price Range: $35 + an hour depending on services.

Maintenance refers to the need to periodically update web pages on your site. Providing continuing support well after the design and construction of your site must be a consideration if you want to keep your site up to date. Port City Portland Maine is there for all these requirements.

Structured to your circumstances, we'll maintain your site on a contractual basis or for an hourly fee(a minimum of 1 hour charged for any work).