Click on any of these links to jump to the appropriate section of our FAQ list. If you can't find your question in the list below please contact us for an answer, we will be pleased to help.
After initial contact from client to Piccante, we try to arrange an obligation-free meeting if possible. The purpose of this is to reach an understanding of what is required from each party in terms of design, content and delivery. A consultation at this early stage is essential for the ultimate success of the design and satisfaction of our clients. Once we understand exactly what is required from your website and what the client wants it to look like, a 25% non-refundable deposit* is required to undertake the draft design process. Once the draft is completed we will again consult to make sure it meets all requirements. Fine-tuning is carried out and when satisfied with the outcome the remaining pages are constructed. Final client approval is received before the payment balance is required and the website is uploaded to the World Wide Web.
Want to continue or get a quotation from us? Simply send us an email with your requirements.
* for CMS and e-commerce sites the deposit required is 75%
A complete shopping trolley site that allows you to add products at will, group them in categories, maintain customer lists and view orders made online. This type of site normally utilises PayPal (as standard) so that you don't have to worry about handling your customers secure credit card details. Other payment gateways may involve extra costs, please ask us.
Piccante's purpose built e-commerce sites are tailored to your specifications complete with your corporate or business branding, logos and colours. We also include a handy User Guide that will help you with some of the more common features of these excellent websites. These e-commerce solutions are very flexible and versatile websites. A great advantage is that you or your staff can make changes as often as you like by logging in as an 'administrator'. It is particularly good for large numbers of products and/or with lots of 'product variations' - for example, if you sell T-shirts online you can easily add product options selling red, blue, green and white shirts in S, M, L and XL sizes. New pages can be added, products updated, prices changed, sale items introduced, shipping charges added or changed and promotions advertised. You can even specify multiple languages and currencies. Clients are required to login before purchasing products using so you can easily generate newsletters or emails to them.
There are a few other points that you should be aware of regarding purpose-built e-commerce sites.
Firstly, the basic functionality and layout is slightly more rigid than a 'traditional' HTML website. This means that we can customise your e-commerce site to give you the 'look and feel' that you want (logos, images, fonts etc) but are limited in its core functionality and in some ways, how it appears on screen.
We ask that you read our Terms and Conditions to ensure that you understand our conditions regarding these websites that involve third-party software installations.
Secondly, hosting through Piccante Web Hosting (rather than through an external provider) may be a requirement. This is not for commercial reasons but because not all web hosters can support and install the e-commerce software.
Advantages:
Easy (and free) for you to update | Change product information and prices at will | Add extra administrators so your staff can also update your site | Orders made securely and automatically | Easy to update order status with automatic email notification to the customer | Ideal for sites selling multiple products or services | Customers can purchase products immediately | No upfront or monthly fees required if you use PayPal for accepting payments
Each website is a unique design created especially for your business by Piccante. More flexible in layout and design than a purpose-built e-commerce website, these can be perfected to your exact requirements in 'look and feel'. It utilises the security of PayPal so you can accept credit card payments (without having to handle the secure information yourself) and can also incorporate a full shopping trolley if you want to sell more than one product.
Advantages:
Absolute control over the 'look and feel' of your site | Better suited to one, or a handful of products | Orders made securely and automatically | PayPal shopping trolley can be included | Customers can purchase products immediately | No upfront or monthly fees required if you use PayPal for accepting payments
This file backup service is offered by Piccante Web Design as a type of 'insurance policy'. If you purchase this option we will back up your entire site (including product database) every month and store this information independently of the web server. In the unlikely event of server corruption, data loss or malicious attack (i.e. hacking) Piccante will restore your site to the last-saved condition free of charge. We can also restore your site if you make a serious error in your site administration, however some cost may be incurred for the restoration.
A Content Management System (CMS) is a very flexible and versatile type of website. Although it looks a lot like a regular website, the real advantage is that you can make your own changes and keep it up to date yourself. This independence means that you or your staff can update your site as often as you require. New pages can be added, products updated, promotions advertised and latest news items displayed to give your customers and staff perfectly up-to-date information. You can also keep your clients informed through RSS (Really Simple Syndication or 'news feeds'), create mailing lists and email or print PDF pages from your website. Our CMS sites are based upon an award-winning, widely used and proven Content Management System. They are tailored to your specifications complete with your corporate or business branding, logos and colours. We also include a handy User Guide that will help you with some of the more common features of these excellent websites.
There are a few other points that you should be aware of regarding our CMS sites.
Firstly, the basic functionality and layout is slightly more rigid than a 'traditional' HTML website. This means that we can customise your CMS site to give you the 'look and feel' that you want (logos, images, fonts etc) but are limited in its core functionality and in some ways, how it looks on screen.
We ask that you read our Terms and Conditions to ensure that you understand our conditions regarding our third-party software installations.
Secondly, hosting through Piccante Web Hosting (rather than through an external provider) may be a requirement. This is not for commercial reasons but because not all web hosters can support and install our chosen CMS.
This file backup service is offered by Piccante Web Design as a type of 'insurance policy'. If you purchase this option we will back up your entire site (including database) every month and store this information independently of the web server. In the unlikely event of server corruption, data loss or malicious attack (i.e. hacking) Piccante will restore your site to the last-saved condition free of charge. We can also restore your site if you make a serious error in your site administration, however some cost may be incurred for the restoration.
The Content Editing System (CES) is a very simple concept. Piccante Web Design will build 'blocks' of editable content into your site that you can update yourself. No knowledge of web-coding or HTML is required, you simply need to login using a secure password, select the 'block' that you want to edit, make your changes and then save them. Your updated content is immediately viewable online.
Please follow these instructions carefully. If at any step you cannot proceed, or encounter an error message please contact us with the details (it will help a lot if you can copy and paste the error message - if any - into your email).
There are several online booking systems available on the market. Piccante Web Design has a very good working relationship with the GlobeKey reservation system and recommends it to our customers. The main reasons for this are:
Want to find out more? Visit GlobeKey's website for more information.
Web hosting is basically the hiring of 'web space' on a server where your website resides. This web space includes a certain amount of disk space (for your website, it's images and files and your email) and bandwidth (the amount of data per month that your website uses sending and receiving information to and from internet users.
Your website is hosted through our own service via an upstream provider which offers a 99.9% network uptime guarantee. Technical support is available free of charge.
Hosting fees cover the cost of utilising space on the World Wide Web and includes an unlimited number of email accounts (spam/anti-virus protected). Your minimum site storage limit is 100Mb - ample for most business' requirements, however, some larger organisations with requirements for email storage may need a Plan 2 or Plan 3 hosting package with greater capacity. You can view the cost of our hosting plans on our prices page.
Certainly. Web hosting plans may be upgraded free of charge if you find that you are reaching your webspace limit, require more databases or access to AW webstats for analysis of your site traffic. The difference in cost is charged on a pro-rata basis for the remainder of the year. A downgrade to a plan beneath the existing plan may take effect immediately, however, no refund will be made for the cheaper plan until the end of the hosting year, at which point the reduced price will take effect.
Enter your domain name followed by "/cpanel" in the address bar of your web browser - for example, www.yourdomainname.com/cpanel and press return/enter. (You can then bookmark it or add it to your favourites for easy access)
Enter the username and password provided to you by Piccante.
You may need to accept site certificates as being valid to continue. From the Control Panel you may add, edit or delete email accounts, access webmail, backup your website, view logs and analysis information and change domain information.
Simply send Piccante Web Design an email with your required changes (including the text content, photographs etc) and we will update your website as soon as possible, normally within one or two working days. You will be charged to the nearest minute for the work required at the hourly rate published on our prices page. If you have a purpose-built e-commerce or CMS site you can make any changes yourself - simply refer to the User Guide that Piccante provided with your completed website.
Email marketing is an extremely effective method of generating extra business or interest in your site or commercial activities. This marketing technique targets a select group of people that have indicated to you that they are interested in hearing from you and keeps them updated with your latest news, views and product information.
Each month (or more frequently if you wish), Piccante will mail out an update to your list of selected recipients with the content that you would like displayed. Up to 500 emails can be sent - for a larger campaign please send us an email asking for a price confirmation.
Piccante will create professional-quality HTML-based emails that have much greater impact than standard text-based ones do. Included in the email marketing package are 12 emails, one per month for a year (or more often by arrangement) to promote your latest news, events, product launches or simply to keep in regular contact with your clients.
If you have paid for Google Analytics to be included in your website, follow these steps once your site is online to view your analytics account.
In simple terms, a domain name is the identification, or address of a website. For example, www.piccantewebdesign.com is our domain name. Domain names can end with .com, .net, .info, .org, or be suffixed with various countries, i.e. .co.uk, .co.nz etc.
Your domain name should be memorable and reflect the name or nature of your business. This is very important for search engine recognition. For example, if your company is 'Smith's Apparel Ltd' and your main area of business is selling T-shirts you would be better off getting a domain name like smiths-t-shirts.com than smithsapparelltd.com
You must purchase a domain name before your website can be published online, however we can start working on your website before this is obtained.
A redirected domain is a domain name that you have registered and purchased that re-directs automatically to your main website domain. For example, you might purchase smiths-t-shirts.com but because you do most of your business in Hong Kong you might also want to get smiths-t-shirts.com.hk and have this automatically re-direct to the .com domain.
Finding available domain names can be a challenge, particularly if you want a .com domain or are using common names or words. Plenty of imagination helps! Domain names can be searched for, and purchased from many online suppliers or registrars. If you wish, we can obtain your domain name for you. Just send us an email with as much detail as possible (domain names you would like to try, and what domain suffix you want - i.e. .com, .co.uk etc). We will get back to you with a price for this service - unfortunately we cannot publish the cost here because domain name prices change depending upon the suffix. If you want to get a domain name yourself, a useful place to start is with GoDaddy.com or Melbourne IT - but remember to shop around for the best prices!
Your domain name 'points' to the web hosting servers as set by the Domain Name Servers (DNS). To set these correctly for Piccante hosting you will need to enter the following primary and secondary Name Servers in your domain name Control Panel. You can access your domain name control panel by following the login instructions given by your domain name registrar when you first signed up for your domain name. You will then need to navigate to the DNS settings for your domain name. Set the primary and secondary Name Servers to the following:
(1) Primary DNS
ns1.piccantewebdesign.com
(2) Secondary DNS
ns2.piccantewebdesign.com
There are two ways to access your webmail. It may be done through your Control Panel login - see the FAQ about how to login to your cPanel -or, to directly access it (from any computer connected to the internet) enter your domain name followed by "/webmail" into your browser and press enter/return, for example, www.yourdomainname.com/webmail
You may wish to bookmark this or add it to your favourites for easy access. If you want to view ALL email accounts setup on your hosting account, enter the username and password provided to you by Piccante.
If you wish to view only ONE email account, enter the full email address of that account and the password provided to you by Piccante.
Once this has been correctly entered, you can choose which software you want to use to view your webmail. Options to view your email include Horde, SquirrelMail and RoundCube - all perfectly adequate webmail systems.
Most people prefer to access their email on their own computer rather than via web-based mail. By using Microsoft's Outlook Express, Mac's Mail or a third-party program like Mozilla's Thunderbird, you don't have to login to your webmail account to receive or send email. Piccante Web Design recommends Mail if you use a Mac, or Mozilla Thunderbird for either Mac or PC - it is free, secure and easy to use. You can download it here.
Click for setup instructions for Mozilla Thunderbird
Click for setup instructions for Apple's Mail
Click for setup instructions for Microsoft's Outlook
Emailable forms have the following advantages over a simple 'click to email' link:
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