FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

When you start talking about all that goes in to the various facets of a website, inevitably there are a lot of questions that arise. So if you’ve got a question about how anything works, what works best on our setup, or any kind of process-related question, take a look at what we’ve put together here.

If you’ve still got questions after having looked through this stuff, or if you just want to talk to someone drop us a line. We’re glad to help in any way we can.

If you have a current account with us you can log in to get help here.

General

Got general questions about Foundry? Look no further – you’ve found what you’re looking for. We’ve got you covered.

General FAQ

Maintenance

No doubt you’ve got questions regarding our WordPress maintenance service. Here are some that are common.

Maintenance FAQ

Design

Get the details about specific questions we get on our WordPress design & development services.

Design FAQ

Analytics

There is a lot to learn about how robust our analytics service is. Here are some answers to common questions.

Analytics FAQ

Hosting

Our hosting service is powerful and fast, but also simple and easy to use. Here are questions that we get a lot.

Hosting FAQ

General FAQ

  1. How can you help me?
  2. Do you specialize in a particular CMS?
  3. Does that mean you don’t work with other content management systems?
  4. What is Foundry Web Works?
  5. What happened to Orracle Media?
  6. Where are you located?
  7. Do you have an affiliate program?

1. How can you help me?

Several years ago we started out as a small web design business. But over the years things change, and when it comes to the doing things in the online world things can change pretty fast!

But regardless of the change and ever-evolving world of online business, we’ve always had one core principle that has guided everything we do – empower people with the tools they need to chart their own course, set their own sail, and gain freedom and independence by building a business and a life online.

Whether you’re building a personal platform, developing a new aspect for your brick and mortar business by going online for the first time, or you’re an experienced veteran of online business, our goal has always been to provide the best possible solutions for the issues and problems you face.

We’ve grown to be more than a web design business. In fact, we’ve noticed over the years that the design of an awesome website and getting live is just the beginning – not the end! There are so many other factors facing website owners and we’ve fielded so many requests that we’ve reshaped our business to meet these needs better. For years now we’ve provided website maintenance services to our clients, and we’ve updated that offering and made it better and more affordable. We also provide a host of tools like website analytics and outstanding web hosting for our customers and clients.

We’ve watched and listened (as well as participated!) as the online business world has grown and evolved over the years and we’ve molded and evolved our business to meet those needs. We’re here to equip business owners to do business better on the web, and get the tech stuff out of the way so you can ship your art. That’ really – really – important to us.

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2. Do you specialize in a particular CMS?

Foundry has narrowed focus for new design and development projects to working with WordPress. There are a lot of other great platforms available, and we always believe in using the right tool for the job, but the vast majority of the work we do these days is on WordPress.

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3. Does that mean you don’t work with other content management systems?

No – not quite. In fact, we’ve got quite a bit experience working with and building sites using Drupal. We love Drupal! But we also believe that we need to fit the right tool to meet the need, and in almost all instances for the kind of work we do these days, WordPress is the perfect solution. If you’re interested in exploring a larger, more complex site with a system like Drupal, drop us a note so we can discuss it. We’d love to hear from you!

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4. What is Foundry Web Works?

Foundry Web Works is a business that thrives on providing outstanding web services and stellar customer support and service. We started as a web design company, but over the years this business has grown to cover a lot more than just web design. We still do web design, but we also have a wealth of support services for website owners do business better on the internet. You can learn more about what we do and our offerings on our web services page.

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5. What happened to Orracle Media?

The Orracle Media brand has been retired. We’re grateful for the years that it served us well, but as mentioned in the answer on question #1 above, we’ve grown and evolved quite a bit over the last few years, and it became a matter of outgrowing that brand and what it represented.

All of the good things that helped Orracle Media be successful are still here, and we’ve also learned a lot and have grown a lot, so it was time for a change.

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6. Where are you located?

This is one of my favorite questions to answer! We’re located in Tallahassee, Florida. It’s ridiculously hot here in the summer and almost – almost – makes drinking your morning coffee an experience not unlike enjoying a warm beverage in a sauna. We’re also distributed with others on our small team that are located in other places around the country. The best part about this is that we work with clients all over the country in addition to those here in Florida – New York, Oregon, California, Colorado, Texas, Ohio and Tennessee just to name a few!

So don’t let distance be a stumbling block – we can provide a fantastic solution for you regarless of where you are.

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7. Do you have an affiliate program?

Referrals have been the lifeblood of our business for years now and we love to reward those who send business our way! Our goal with this is to keep it simple and straightforward so it’s easy to understand and easy to use. Here is the way our referral and affiliate reward programs work.

Hosting, Analytics, and Subscription Affiliate Program

If you send us someone who signs up for any of our subscription services, we’ll pay you the amount equivalent to the new customer’s first month plan. So if someone you referred signed up for our SEO Rank Reporting service then we would pay you a one-time referral of $77, the same amount they would pay that first month.

Annual analytics subscriptions would get the one month equivalent. So for example if you sent someone who sigend up for the annual analytics service the payout on that would be $7.00.

Please note these subscription referral payments are one-time payouts per referral.

Website Design/Project Affiliate Program

Refer a new sign up for website projects big or small and receive a referral reward of 10% of the project’s cost for closed and paid projects.

Contact us here to get started.

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Maintenance FAQ

  1. What kinds of tasks does your maintenance service allow for?
  2. What’s the turn around time for tasks?
  3. Are there things that aren’t covered by your maintenance service?
  4. What are the limitations of the maintenance service?
  5. I really want you to make my site faster – can I do that through a Foundry Work Order?
  6. I’ve been hacked – can you clean up my site with a Foundry Work Order?
  7. So what can you use a Foundry Work Order for?

1. What kinds of tasks does your maintenance service allow for?

Our maintenance services are designed to cover just about anything you would need for your WordPress site. This service is a great solution for having your WordPress core and plugins updated, your theme color or fonts adjusted, getting a new plugin installed and configured, securing your site, having content updated, backups created and more. Think of this service as your personal staff webmaster who is there to cover the things you’re not comfortable doing, or just would rather not do yourself.

We’ve got two different levels to choose from – pick the one that suits your needs.

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2. What’s the turn around time for tasks?

Most tasks are completed the day they’re received, but all are completed within 24 hours. Some maintenance tasks require more time than others, so keep that in mind.

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3. Are there things that aren’t covered by your maintenance service?

There are some things that are more involved and we’ve separated those things out in to their own services, like site speed optimization, and cleaning up a hacked site. However, we’ve got you covered either way! You can learn more about our Website Performance services here.

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4. What are the limitations of the maintenance service?

We kind of covered that one above, but to clarify things a bit more, it really depends on what we use for a definition of a “maintenance task”. We define a maintenance task as a task that can be completed within one hour. So if it fits within one hour and it’s covered by your subscription plan, we’ll get it covered. Simple as that.

Our goal for these service options is to get the technical stuff out of the way so you can be free to focus on building a great business.

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5. I really want you to make my site faster – can I do that through a Foundry Work Order?

No – site speed optimization is one of those things that’s a good bit more involved than what can be reasonably managed in an hour, so things like site speed optimization have their own separate services.

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6. I’ve been hacked – can you clean up my site with a Foundry Work Order?

Getting your site cleaned up after you’ve been compromised is another one of those things that’s more involved than a task that be completed in an hour, so our site clean up services are a separate service too.

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7. So what can you use a Foundry Work Order for?

Foundry Work Orders are designed to provide you the one time support you need to get problems and issues solved with your website. Any of the tasks mentioned above in question 1, or on the maintenance page can be used for this one time support ticket.

If for some reason your request just isn’t something we can complete within the parameters of the Foundry Work Order, we’ll provide a full refund promptly.

We believe in lots of really great communication so we’ll provide detailed notes of what’s been done and when it was completed too, so you’re always in the loop.

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Design & Development

  1. How much does web design cost?
  2. We’re a small business with a small budget. Do you have a solution for us?
  3. Can you host our new website for us?
  4. What does the web design process look like?
  5. How long does the web design process take?
  6. What are my responsibilities for getting my web design project done?
  7. Can I see the design while it’s being developed?
  8. Can you help us with our content?
  9. How do I get started?

1. How much does web design cost?

We’ve got several different solutions for you. We have three different plans starting at $1950 for custom web design that you can learn about here.

We also have solutions for those who don’t really need custom website design, or have a big budget, but more on that in the next question below.

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2. We’re a small business with a small budget. Do you have a solution for us?

Absolutely! We’ve found that many times, just getting off the ground is the most important step and fully custom designed website development is not necessarily needed at this point. You are better off getting started and getting a site set up that gives you the tools you need to get started rather than investing a larger amount of money for custom design. So to solve that issue we’ve got two solutions for you – our website workshops, and WPLaunch.

Our Website Workshops are a one day bootcamp for going from zero to a complete website. This is very similar to the next option below, although the next option does not provide for the personally directed process, or content placement that our Workshops do. You can find more details on that here.

WPLaunch is also part of our business and this is a solution that is specifically designed to help you launch and go from nothing to a fully configured, fully featured, and fully themed WordPress website in no time at all.

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3. Can you host our new website for us?

Yes – absolutely. In fact, we encourage you to host with us. Our hosting business is a substantial part of what we do at Foundry and we are supported by the best in the industry. You can learn more about our hosting options here.

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4. What does the web design process look like?

Each project will look a little bit different. However, here is an example of what our workflow looks like.

To get things started we schedule our kickoff strategy call so we can dig in to the details of project. We preceed that call that call by sending you a design questionnaire that will help facilitate that conversation. In that call we’ll cover all the design and development aspects that we need to cover, go over fonts, colors, etc., make sure we have a firm grasp on features, and set our roadmap and start and completion dates.

  • Project design brief – Working through a project assessment to get all design features, colors, ideas, concepts, etc. to get everything out on to the table so we know exactly the goals we need to meet with the overall project at completion
  • Branding concept – new logo and branding creation (colors, styles, etc.) if branding is included as part of the project.
  • Sitemap – evaluating current site structure, making recommended improvements and creating a new site architecture – menus, taxonomies, page structures, etc. – for maximum efficiency
  • Wireframe – basic page mock-ups to display page structure
  • Design – site mock-up design for home page, interior page, and blog layout
  • Development – implementation of the design concepts and mock-up designs, including getting your content added and placed in the new site.
  • Beta – bug testing, workflow testing, basically making sure everything works the way it’s supposed to work.
  • Launch – deployment of final site to live environment, DNS configuration, CloudFlare integration and finalization, check of 301 redirects from old site to maintain pagerank and other SEO indicators
  • Post-launch Training – new system walk through on how to use your new site.

You can learn more about our process on our custom web design page.

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5. How long does the web design process take?

Doing custom design usually takes anywhere from around 30 days for our Entrepreneur’s Plan projects, to 60 or more for more in depth and complex sites like some e-commerce sites. We will go over the timeline with you at the beginning so you know what to expect at every point along the way.

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6. What are my responsibilities for getting my web design project done?

Your responsibilities include providing content in a timely manner, being responsive when we have questions or requests, and evaluating our milestones in a reasonable amount of time. The biggest time-sucking crunch for getting design projects completed on time is having content ready to go, and many times, business owners underestimate the amount of work needed to get it complete. We’ll cover this in our kick-off call, but having the resources you want to be present on the new site ready to go is absolutely crucial to getting done on time. Did I mention it’s absolutely essential?

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7. Can I see the design while it’s being developed?

Yes – you most definitely can. We do all development on private server that is web-accessible so you can see what’s going on. Seeing development as it’s completed is a huge way for you to be involved in the process. However, we caution that you don’t check it too often, or get too wrapped up about the work that you see going there. We’ll notify you when certain stages of your design is complete for your review, however things can look rather messy until that time, so always know that you’re looking at a work in progress and that thing that you see that’s bothering you is already on our list of things we need to address.

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8. Can you help us with our content?

Unfortunately, at this time, we don’t provide copywriting services so copy is up to you. However, we can help you with ongoing management of your content and updates through our maintenance subscriptions. If you need a page updated, you need dates added to your event calendar, or help with your newsletter, we can help with all of those things. You can learn more about our WordPress maintenance and upkeep services here.

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9. How do I get started?

Getting started is completely painless and easy. We want to make the entire experience a positive one for you. You can start the ball rolling by working through our design questionnaire here, or if you have more questions than what we’ve covered in this FAQ you can contact us here.

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Analytics

  1. How do I get started and get signed up?
  2. Can I have more than one website on my analytics account?
  3. What does [secure search] mean?
  4. Foundry Analytics did not log a visitor which my other analytics app displayed. Why?
  5. How do I change my time zone?
  6. I lost my tracking code / Where do I get my tracking code?
  7. Does the tracking code need to go on every page, or just my homepage?
  8. Foundry Analytics never monitored my traffic, ever!
  9. Foundry Analytics is no longer tracking my traffic!
  10. I don’t see Spy traffic in my reports.
  11. How do I block my own visits to my web site from being tracked?
  12. There’s a significant difference between the reports I’m getting from Foundry Analytics and the other service that I use.
  13. Someone I know who lives in City A visited my site but s/he was reported as located in City Z.
  14. What's the highest level of traffic that Foundry Analytics supports?
  15. How long is data stored for?
  16. Can I use Foundry Analytics on the same site as Google Analytics / Statcounter / etc?

1. How do I get started and get signed up?

Getting signed up for Foundry Analytics is simple. Simply go to this page, select your plan and complete the checkout. We'll be notified, and will go to work immediately getting your new analytics account set up and send you everything you need, like your login and password, your tracking code and anything else you may need to get started!

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2. Can I have more than one website on my analytics account?

Absolutely – we have several customers who have multiple websites on their accounts. If want to add an additional website to your account you simply need to order an additional analytics plan for your account.

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3. What does [secure search] mean?

Currently, Google users who’re logged into their accounts while searching for information will have their search terms hidden from the referrer string for privacy reasons. The result is that analytics applications—including Google Analytics—have no knowledge of what these search terms were. When this happens, we’ll report these "hidden" data as [secure search].

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4. Foundry Analytics did not log a visitor which my other analytics app displayed. Why?

There are many reasons why a visitor may not appear in your traffic logs:

  • They’re using software that blocks tracking software or other "privacy" apps
  • Our tracking servers were blocked by their firewalls
  • Their browser is not sending a proper referrer
  • The visitor is a bot. Foundry Analytics is particularly hard line in filtering out bots compared to other similar services. At first blush, this may show that our results are inaccurate but we only count real human visitors so the information you get is relevant to your needs
  • The visitors have a slow connection so our tracking code didn’t have enough time to download and execute before they left the page
  • Javascript was disabled
  • You included them in your IP block list

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5. How do I change my time zone?

You can specify and change time zones for each of your websites in the preferences area for that site.

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6. I lost my tracking code / Where do I get my tracking code?

On your user homepage, click on "Preferences" (next to the website name), then the "Tracking Code" link located near the top—you’ll find the tracking code on this page.

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7. Does the tracking code need to go on every page, or just my homepage?

Every page that you want to monitor must contain the tracking code. If your site has a "footer" file, then this will always appear at the bottom of all the pages in your site. Place the code on this file to automatically include the tracking code on every page.

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8. Foundry Analytics never monitored my traffic, ever!

Make sure that your domain name was typed correctly in your site preferences. If not, then we won’t be able to track the traffic for that website. If the domain is correct, then there may be a couple of reasons why you’re experiencing this problem:

  • The tracking code wasn’t installed fully (and correctly) on your site. Verify the HTML on your live site and if the tracking code’s not there, get a fresh correct copy of your tracking code and install it again on your site.
  • Your site may be using "frames" to mask the real domain. Even if our tracking code is installed properly on site, your traffic won’t still be tracked if this is the case. For example, a visitor goes to "mydomain.com" but under the radar it’s loading "mydomain.geocities.com" in a frame. To obtain data on your traffic, use the second domain that you’re masking and not the first.

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9. Foundry Analytics is no longer tracking my traffic!

Your tracking code may have been removed accidentally from your site when you restored it to a previous version that didn’t contain the code. Don’t panic. Check your live site via "view source" and look for the tracking code. If it’s not there, then get a fresh copy and re-install it. If the problem persists, contact us.

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10. I don’t see Spy traffic in my reports.

The information that we supply via Spy is "live" data—meaning, this data arrives 1-5 minutes earlier than the data you’ll find on the rest of the service.

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11. How do I block my own visits to my web site from being tracked?

Find the "IP tags and filters" section on your site preferences and enter each IP address that you don’t want included in the tracking report. It won’t prevent the person from visiting your site but it will tell our app to disregard the visit in the data reporting. You can also place a cookie on the same page so your own visits won’t be counted whatever your IP address is.

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12. There’s a significant difference between the reports I’m getting from Foundry Analytics and the other service that I use.

No two analytics works the same way so you won’t get similar numbers from both. Particularly for "log analyzers" like AWStats, these services report ALL traffic to your site including those from bots and search engines. Most hosted services like ours only track human activity and that’s what gets reported.

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13. Someone I know who lives in City A visited my site but s/he was reported as located in City Z.

A visitor’s location is identified through their IP address. Our geolocation database is 99% accurate on a country level, 84% accurate on a city level within the US, and approximately 70% accurate for cities outside the US. A third party stores this data on a proprietary format so we can’t change it, but it is updated once a month by the company that provides the service. Because there are 4.2 billion possible IPs that are constantly shifting, there’s some difficulty in keeping this information current.

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14. What's the highest level of traffic that Foundry Analytics supports?

For a single site, we allow up to 500,000 daily visitors and/or 1,000,000 daily page views. We imposed this limit because there’s a high level of detail on each visitor that lands on your site that we track. If these thresholds are breached, it places undue pressure on the database server which tracks and handles traffic. There are plans to accommodate the peculiarities of busy sites as well as a "Spy only" plan that doesn’t need database processing, both of which are perfect for websites that are way over our current limits.

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15. How long is data stored for?

We can only store 30 days of history for free accounts. On the other hand, paid accounts have the privilege of having access to an indefinite history, except individual visitors and actions which take up large amounts of space. We only guarantee 6 months’ storage for this data but we only "purge’ them about once yearly. That means that at any time, you have 6 to 18 months of history for individual visitors and actions.

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16. Can I use Foundry Analytics on the same site as Google Analytics / Statcounter / etc?

Yes. Our tracking code works well with other analytics apps and shouldn’t interfere with anything.

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Hosting FAQ

  1. What’s so special about your hosting service?
  2. Can we trust your hosting service?
  3. Do you allow controversial or adult content?
  4. Do you provide backups for your hosting services?
  5. Do I have to be a Foundry client to use your backup service? It looks really great!
  6. Can you move my site for me if I switch?
  7. Where do I login in to my control panel?
  8. Will you install WordPress (or some other CMS) for me?
  9. I’ve still got questions, how do I get in touch with you?

1. What’s so special about your hosting service?

We pride ourselves on providing rock solid, professional web hosting with a commitment to outstanding and personalized service and support. We’ve chosen to specifically offer a narrow band of services so that we can specialize in delivering the best hosting experience for you.

Our hosting service is fully managed so you simply need to reach out to us to get issues resolved and find the help you’re looking for. We are completely different than most hosting services that will leave you to solve your issue by yourself. We’ve had that same experience in the past, and we know it sucks and it’s frustrating. That doesn’t happen here. We work side by side with you to help get your issue or problem solved and help where you want to go.

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2. Can we trust your hosting service?

Absolutely. Our hosting service is powered and supported by the worldwide leader in server and hosting technology, Rackspace. We are an official Rackspace Partner, so you can know without a doubt that the quality of hosting service you get is second to none, and we have a very serious commitment to service and support.

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3. Do you allow controversial or adult content?

Short answer is no, absolutely not. If you have questions about what is considered acceptable please check our acceptable use policy here.

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4. Do you provide backups for your hosting services?

All new Foundry hosting clients have premium offsite secure backups included in their plan, in addition to some other great things that you can earn more about here. If you are an existing hosting client on one of our older hosting plans, you can add our backup service to your account here.

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5. Do I have to be a Foundry client to use your backup service? It looks really great!

You don’t have to be a Foundry hosting client to sign up for our backup service. However, as mentioned above, the backup service is included in all new hosting plans, so why not switch?

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6. Can you migrate my site for me if I switch?

We would love to see you join us at Foundry, and we would be happy to move your site for you too. You can learn more about our site migration service here.

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7. Where can I log in to my hosting control panel?

You can log in to your hosting control panel here.

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8. Will you install WordPress (or some other CMS) for me?

Part of our commitment to delivering outstanding service is our commitment to personalized support. We’ll happily install WordPress for you, or if you need something else, just touch base with us and let us know what you’d like to do, and we’ll get you squared away.

If you need a little help getting up to speed with WordPress you need to take a look at WPLaunch, where you can get a fully configured WordPress site with a theme set up and installed for you. You can learn more about it at WPLaunch.net

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9. I’ve still got questions, how do I get in touch with you?

No doubt there are a lot of questions to be answered, so if you need more info about hardware specs, capacities, data center locations, or whatever else, please contact us so we can discuss your question!

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