Client Welcome Guide

Welcome!

We’re thrilled to have you aboard as a client. We’re your new design & development team. If you want to get to know your team members better, take a look at our team info page.

Here is a brief breakdown of the team members:

  • Gen: Owner, lead developer
  • Danielle: Gen’s assistant

Important Contact Methods

New Plugins Appearing On Your Site

You will most likely be receiving some new plugins on your site, we want to let you know what they are and why you are getting them. Depending on your needs you may receive just some of these:

  • iThemes Security – add security to your website
  • ManageWP – allow us to take backups of your site during work
  • Userback – adds a small widget to the front of your website for submitting feedback (this only be on certain sites based on needs)

Zoom Calls

My calendar is available on Calendly or Book Like a Boss. Calendly is best for those who need accessibility. Book Like a Boss (displayed below) is best for everyone else.

Zoom calls can be booked through my calendar. Note that my calendar requires at least 6 hours advance booking. Times are generally available from 10 am to 5 pm ET on weekdays. Zoom calls are generally billed as hourly work.

You can also book work to be done at a specific time slot without needing to be on a Zoom call. Visit the dedicated work slot booking page to book.

The below form is ONLY for clients with a current billing contract. If you do not have a current billing contract with us, then use the dedicated development time page for booking.

Requesting Additional Work

You have three approaches for requesting work. 

  • Book a Zoom appointment. We meet live on Zoom and can do live website changes.
  • Book a work timeslot. Here you book a specific timeslot for your work to be done, but you don’t need to be on Zoom. This is uninterrupted time for your project and can be great for things like adding in new functionality or building out landing pages.
  • Just send an email with what you’d like done. This puts you into the work queue. Quick items are normally done in 1 business day. Longer items typically take more time and you’ll get an estimate on when it will be done.

Website Maintenance

If you aren’t an existing maintenance client yet, you can access our WordPress Maintenance Service information.

Regular Hours

Regular hours are 10 am – 5 pm ET Monday to Friday. Typical response time is 1 business day. There is some checking of email on major US holidays, but unless it is particularly urgent you may not hear from us until the next business day.

Vacations happen. There is a mailing list for clients through MailChimp, you’ll be automatically added to it. Emails are about once a month and include any upcoming vacations.

Evenings/Afterhours: Email is checked on weekends, but mostly just for alerts from website monitoring services. Unless something is particularly urgent you won’t see a response until normal business hours.

Who is working on your stuff: All of our team members are in the US and have signed confidentiality, non-disclosure & non-compete agreements. As far as who is doing the work, it does depend on what is needed and who is most available. Work is reviewed before calling it ‘complete’.

Payments & Billing

Most billing is done through Xero which has payments options to use PayPal or any major credit or debit card.

Maintenance billing is sent on the 15th of the month for the next billing period (ie: Feb 15th March maintenance) and Autopay is available for your convenience on maintenance.

Autopay is limited to repeating invoices. That means if you requested additional work, it will come as a separate invoice that must be paid manually. The reminder email will even remind you that the invoice is not on autopay and must be paid manually.

My site is down

The first thing to check is whether it’s just you or everyone. Go to http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/ and find out. If the site says it’s just you, then it’s probably related to your computer or internet connection. A good restart can do wonders.

If your site is down and you’re on a maintenance plan, then I already know. Until your site has been down for at least 10 minutes, there isn’t any point in looking into it — short outages happen due to hosting companies needing to perform work on a server. If it’s been longer, then I’ll look into the cause. If it happens outside of normal business hours you can contact your hosting company.

If you are NOT on a maintenance plan, then you should get uptime monitoring through uptimerobot.com.

Submitting an error report

Something not working as expected?

Unfortunately, I’m not a mind reader. I need you to be quite specific regarding the problem.

Whenever reporting an error with your website, make sure to include ALL of the following:

  • URL where the error is occurring
  • Set of steps needed to reproduce the error
  • Browser used
  • Device & OS used
  • Where on the page the error is (screen capture is great here)
  • A brief description of the error
  • What you expected to have happened

Requesting a change

Whenever requesting a change to a website, make sure to include ALL of the following:

  • URL where you want the change to happen (if it is a new URL to be created, specify what you want it to be)
  • Where on the page the change should be made (I can’t read your mind, so don’t ask to make the button blue, say you want the button labeled “Contact” in the upper right corner to be a specific hex value of blue)
  • Exactly what you want to be done (again, can’t read your mind)
  • Any images needed
  • Whether you want to see the page as a draft before edits go live

Google Analytics & Search Console

If you want to share your google analytics or search console with us so that we can look at something specific for you, please share access with the email address [email protected]

Logins & Passwords

Don’t send passwords & logins in plain text email, use the instructions at:
https://www.anphira.com/business-tools/securely-send-logins-passwords/

Most websites have iThemes security installed, this means if you can’t login correctly on your first two attempts stop trying. You’ll get locked out of the site if you keep trying. If you can’t your password right, then use the Lost Password link to get a new password. Also remember, passwords must be STRONG (long and complex), you should be using a password remembering utility to store your passwords not trying to remember them.

In the Event of Emergency

If for some reason you are no longer able to contact Gen (the world does continue to get more uncertain all the time), first try contacting Danielle, she’s my assistant at [email protected].

If you aren’t able to reach her (the world may have really ended), we can recommend and endorse the following alternatives: