FAQs

Do you have a question about Web Power Tools that isn't in our Frequently Asked Questions? Let us know and we'll be happy to find an answer for you.

General Questions

How do you charge?
Web Power Tools charges a $500 setup fee and $80 for the year for hosting and maintenance. Year Two hosting is $99. And a second site from us is $250 setup fee and $80 for the hosting.

What if something is not working correctly? Is there a charge for “fixing” things?
Our Master Control panel lets you simply and our support system at http://www.wpthelpdesk.com lets you try to figure it out for yourself and if there’s something you need help with, you can fill out a support ticket. As long as its a normal request, there is no charge. Additional assistance, design help or tutoring can be purchased if you need it.

How technically proficient do I need to be?
We have geared the WPT system for someone with some computer familiarity. You should be just fine if:
• You know how to access the Internet.
• You know how to use email, including sending and receiving attachments.
• You know Microsoft Word.

These things would be a plus:
• Knowing Microsoft Outlook.
• Using online banking.
• Uploading and downloading digital images.

What provider should I use to hook my computer up to the Internet?
There are no specific recommendations. But…the faster the better. If your area offers DSL or cable Internet connections, you will find the speed much easier to work with than old-fashioned dial-up service. Please note that if you do travel or work outside of your home or office and want to be able to have an Internet connection, you need to make sure that you have a service that you can access from a remote location.

Do I need a computer? Any specific one?
Yes, either your own computer or at the very least regular access to another one. We do not recommend any one computer. Use a PC or Mac, desktop or laptop, whatever you are comfortable with.

Why do I need a website?
When a Web, consultant or service provider meets a new prospect and hands him/her a business card, you can bet that if that potential customer is serious about using your services, they will want to do more research. And in this day and age, that almost always means looking you up online. When you have your own URL with a professional, up-to-date website, they are seeing what you want them to see and receiving your marketing messages. Try Googling yourself and see what comes up. Your participation in a charitable event or a road race? A political contribution? Your wedding announcement? Is that really the impression you want to give?

What about switching my email address?
You may feel you have a lot invested in your existing email address, but let us reassure you that we can help you with the transition over to a professional email address: you will use both simultaneously within Microsoft Outlook and educate your correspondents and clients about your new one. And you can begin to separate your "professional" self from your friends and family email.

Do you use flash or other animation on sites?
No. We feel that simple is better and loads much faster. Some users have trouble with more complex applications and for most professional websites, overly fancy animation and effects are unnecessary and detract from your message.

Will my site look just like other sites?
Not unless you want it to. We have over fifty banners to choose from and you can choose any color combination for backgrounds, fonts, etc. You will be customizing it with your photo, logo and tagline. And of course, the content will be all yours. We do have a custom design option, where you can pay an additional fee to get a custom logo and/or banner for your template, too.

How much time am I going to have to spend on this?
It depends on whether or not you already have a website and/or marketing materials. We have found that new users quickly master the technology and the thing that takes time is "filling in the blanks." If you have it already, this is just cutting and pasting. If not, you need to either write copy or hire someone to do it. That can be time-consuming. But once the site is live...you can decide how much or how little time to spend, since it will always be changing on its own with dynamically generated content you have already entered.

How will I learn how to do this?
Our Lite Site clients get a group tutorial and a detailed manual that explains all the mechanics of building out your site. A full audio training is available on our site 24/7. Our support team uses a help desk system at http://www.wpthelpdesk.com if you need further assistance. If you know Microsoft Word, you will be fine.

Technical Questions

How does hosting work?
When someone registers a URL with a domain registrar, they need to tell the registrar where their URL will live. We work with a mid-size hosted company based in the Midwest. For security reasons, we don’t give out the name of the company, but their servers are hosted in a high-end server farm in Texas called “The Planet.” We have almost seven years experience with them and have never had any issues to speak of.

Are the servers backed up daily? What redundancies are in place?
Your web site is backed up in two locations on a nightly basis: one in the server farm we mentioned above and one on our local server in Ventura, California. The server hardware itself has a number of hardware redundancies to prevent failure at the server level. Should the server fail, our host would replace the hardware and bring the system back up as soon as possible. In the time that we’ve partnered with our hosting company, we haven’t had any significant outages.

Is my site secure from hackers? What security measures do you have?
We take a broad range of industry standard measures to prevent hackers from getting access to our system and our data. Without going into specifics, we take measures to eliminate sensitive data from our database (credit card numbers, for example), we encrypt credit card transactions, our servers are upgraded with the latest security fixes periodically, we use complex passwords, among other things.

What software do I need?
While we would recommend that you have the Microsoft Office suite of programs (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access and Outlook), if you do not have it and choose not to purchase it, you can still use the WPT web-building system if you can get on the Internet.

You will need a web browser to be able to access the Internet, the main ones are Internet Explorer, Netscape or Firefox. These usually come installed on computers, but you may need to upgrade to a newer version if you have an older computer.

Your site will be much stronger if you are able to use your own photos or images (like a logo). You will need some rudimentary aptitude with digital images or someone who can assist you with it. (Try a local teenager). Images for Web Power Tools should be in gif (graphic interchange format) or jpeg (Joint Photographic Experts group, we don’t know why they call it that, either! ).

What if I already have a website and want to move it to this system?
You would need to copy the content in your existing site to our system and then you authorize us to move your site over to our servers. We would move it BEFORE we post your new site to make sure everything is working fine with the old site and then switch over to the new one.

Product Questions

What happened to your Professional Sites?
We found that the robust platform of our Lite Sites could handle most anything our clients needed, so we have discontinued selling it, though we continue to support the clients who have this system.

How many e-mail accounts do I get?
5. As part of the process of moving your web address to our system, we’ll work with you to make sure the various addresses you need are set up and that your mail client is configured to check the mailboxes. Also, if you’re using e-mail addresses at third-party e-mail providers such as AOL, Earthlink, Yahoo!, etc, we strongly encourage you to convert to domain-specific addresses right away! These e-mail addresses are not professional, do nothing to promote your web site and require that you maintain service with one of these providers in order to keep that address.

Can I put streaming audio or video on the site? Any limitations?
We don’t currently have features in our system to support streaming audio or video. However, you can easily upload your media files to a public site like YouTube and then embed the viewer into your WPT site.

What about adding new features?
We are always working on adding new features. If you wanted a particular new feature added to the system we would put it with our other feature requests and integrate your request (or not) depending on what fit the needs of our entire user base. When new features are released, they will be provided at no extra charge to current customers at the appropriate service level.

Do you have an email newsletter system built in?
No. There are a bunch of great systems out there and we don’t want to reinvent any wheels. We can show you how to easily integrate with your Constant Contact account or send text emails.

What if I want to sell something but I don’t want your full ecommerce system?
You can easily add a link to a PayPal button or integrate shopping cart buttons into your pages.