Working Together on Your Website

Project Scheduling

Our process is to schedule the majority of the week with our larger projects, leaving the remaining time for smaller projects and update requests. We have a regular weekly status meeting to discuss progress on current projects and requests for new projects or updates. Completion dates are communicated to our clients after these meetings.

Large Projects

For large website projects, such as custom web-based applications or the creation of new websites, we will advise you of a timeline related to your project, and update you regarding any changes to the schedule. The most successful projects occur when we meet our deadlines and you meet yours. When you provide us with your feedback, corrections, and data according to the timeline we agree to in advance, we promise to complete our work for you on time.

• IMC will do everything possible to meet project deadlines provided to our customers in advance. If necessary, we will work overtime, at no additional charge to meet these dates.
• If the necessary information or content is not supplied to IMC by the date agreed upon, the project will be rescheduled following receipt of the information. The project may be re-prioritized so as not to conflict with other dates already promised to other customers.

Immediate Site Updates

If you are thinking about an update or need to meet a specific deadline, please contact us as soon as possible so we can discuss the options available. We give our honest assessment regarding the work involved in each request. Some items that seem like they would be a quick update could actually be fairly complicated, while other items that may seem complicated could be quite simple. Giving us a “heads up” when you know you will need something will help us prepare.

We have two dedicated customer support representatives on staff. Given the large number of “immediate need” requests and resulting scheduling delays for other projects, we have instituted the following policies to make sure everyone is treated equitably and fairly.

• Updates to written content, photos, etc. will be fit into our work schedule or, for larger updates, scheduled at our regular Monday morning status meetings. We guarantee it will take no more than 5 business days from receipt to completion.
• Updates to scripts or databases can often be more complex than they appear, and they are therefore quoted in advance of our doing the actual programming. Upon written acceptance of the quote (email acceptable), IMC will schedule the project and communicate the projected dates after the next status meeting.
• “Immediate need” updates that require tasks to be completed within 2 business days or less will be evaluated. If the timeframe is possible, given the technological requirements of the request, a 25% rush charge will be added to the invoice to cover the overtime necessary to complete the task. Some requests are simply not possible, given the scope of the request. That information will be communicated back to the client and a realistic completion date discussed.
• “Immediate need” updates that require work to be completed between 5pm Friday and 8:30am Monday or over a holiday will incur a 50% rush charge.

Emergency Updates

You can contact us after hours via text message.  Please reserve this for true emergencies only as the message is forwarded to the personal cell phone of staff members who may or may not be in a place with immediate computer access. This should be used to report immediate information about unusual problems that we can address via cell phone (i.e. contacting technical support if your website is down). Please note that we have 3rd party tools that monitor our servers and alert us via text message if there is a problem.  If your website is down and the cause is server related, we probably already know about it and someone is working on it. Emergency updates can be completed as soon as someone is available. PLease note we do not have 24/7 staff.

The way to reach us in an emergency is: help@imediaconsult.com.

Helping Us to Build and Maintain Your Site

“Content” is the information you provide on your site. It includes text, images, videos, and anything else presented to your site’s visitors. To reduce the amount of time necessary to complete an update or build out a new site, we have found the following content management procedures work best:

• Please send original content and all changes to us electronically. We can accept a wide range of files (Excel, Word, PDF, etc.)
  • If it is a simple change, you can put it in an email. (Please be clear in your subject line that the email contains site update information.)
  • If you would like to send a marked-up copy in a PDF to accompany the changes, please feel free.
  • When you only provide us with a paper copy of your content, we must re-type everything. This is time-consuming and requires that we then proofread the content carefully for any errors, adding significantly to the time necessary to complete the task.
• Be as clear as you can regarding what needs to be done.
  • Please mark updated documents so we know what has changed. For example, change the color of the text or highlight it. Or, give us some other type of clear instruction as to what we need to do.
  • If we don’t have instructions otherwise, we will replace the content on the page with the content in the document. While this process is fast, it introduces a larger margin for typos and other errors and slows us down as more proofreading is necessary. We also often need to clean up the copy and re-instate any special formatting.
• For image or video files:
  • Please save files with relevant file names (i.e. JoeSmith.jpg is much easier for us to work with than DSC10983.jpg).
  • Images do not need to be more than 100 dpi for online use. We are happy to resize images so they fit the space available. If there are any questions, it is always better to send us a larger, higher-resolution image as it can be reduced. It is much harder to increase the size of a small, low-res image.
  • Please tell us what pages you would like images on (i.e. JoeSmith.jpg should go on the About Us page).

We review the changes as they are received and try to ask questions then. Sometimes, however, the questions are not evident until we get into the work. We hope for quick turnaround when asking questions so that we can complete your update in a timely manner.

Browser Compatibility (How Your Website Displays)

IMC strives to make all websites display well for current versions and at least one previous version of the following browsers on their available Mac and PC platforms:

• Internet Explorer/Edge
• Firefox/Camino
• Safari
• Chrome
• Opera

We also build mobile style sheets so that websites can be viewed more easily on mobile devices. Each browser and mobile device has its own way of interpreting page layout and while we use World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) compliant coding practices, each browser or device may display the web site slightly differently from another.

Internet Explorer is a special case. Currently no two versions of Internet Explorer being used (versions 6-10) display pages the same way. Internet Explorer 11 is the only remaining version of Internet Explorer – Microsoft Edge is the superseding product. If you need compatibility with anything below IE 11, we can accommodate your need, but there will be an additional charge to do so.

Domain Registration and Hosting

www.YourCompany.com

We can register your primary domain (website address) as part of your hosting package. Additional domains are available for a small annual fee. We can specify you as the account contact if you would like. Alternatively, if you want to register your own domain, and then give us the account information, we can re-point the domain to our servers when we launch your website.

Website Hosting

“Hosting” refers to keeping all the information that makes up your website on a much larger computer, called a server. This is how your information is brought up on a computer when someone types in www.yourcompany.com. To ensure your website never lapses, hosting accounts are automatically renewed at the prevailing rate at the end of each term. Each hosting account includes:

• One domain (i.e. yourdomain.com)
• SSL Certificate, provided by Comodo
• 20 500MB Email mailboxes
• Unlimited Email forwarding
• 50 GB disk space and 5,000 GB data transfer per month
• Unlimited MySQL databases
• Free installation of common open source software, such as WordPress, Drupal, etc. (Customization and any special setup requests are extra)
• Automatic updates of all software to keep it secure and patch bug fixes
• Free daily backups with 30 days stored offsite in a protected Amazon cloud account
• Up to 3 websites can be hosted in the same space

We require 30 days written notice (email acceptable) of cancellation. Fees for hosting accounts will continue to accrue, even if a site is moved elsewhere and we are not notified.  Hosting accounts that are more than 90 days overdue will be suspended, and your website will then be unavailable, until payment in full is received.

Email support is included and we will help set up Outlook, Thunderbird, and Mac Mail. Instructions can be found on our website as well. While we will provide all the necessary information to setup an email account, unfortunately, we cannot support all available mail clients. If we need to provide custom consulting for a mail client not listed above, our regular consulting fees will apply.

Software/Computer Support

IMC routinely recommends software, such as WordPress, to manage websites. We will provide the information necessary to connect to your website and an abbreviated set of documentation to help get you started and perform the most common tasks necessary to manage the website. This software is used on both Apple and Windows-based computers in our office on a regular basis and will have been tested with sites before sharing the connection information with our customers.

We rarely see problems with this software, but if the software does not run on a particular computer, it is up to the customer to contact his/her IT person/department or Adobe Customer Support. As each person’s computer is different, it is up to that person to resolve any software conflicts. We are unable to support computers at that level.

Payment Policies

Quick Sites

We require a $500 down payment to begin the project and the balance plus hosting fee upon completion.

Project Payments

We require a 40% down payment to begin the project and will invoice items upon completion. Invoices will be due upon receipt.

Website Hosting

Hosting invoices are Net 30. Reminders will go out at 30 days and 60 days overdue. At 90 days overdue, accounts will be suspended until full payment is received.

Finance charges equivalent to 18% APR will be added to all invoices 30 days or more overdue, beginning December 1, 2010. Finance charges will continue to accrue monthly until the invoice is paid.