General Support Documents

Frequently Asked Questions

This page covers our clients most Frequently Asked Questions - and the answers.  If you have a question which is not covered here please let us know and we'll answer your question and add it to this page for future visitors.

Why can't I just create my own website ?

You can, many company web sites are home grown - however be prepared to spend a lot of time reading and learning. A web site is a little like an iceberg - the visitor sees the visible part but underlying this are a great many factors such as browser compatibility, graphic optimizations, search engine optimization and a dozen others. Unless you understand these factors the web site that looks great on your own PC could look totally different or even not work at all on a visitors PC.       Back to top

How do I transfer my domain to EarthSkater and how much does it cost ?

The easiest way to do this is to use our Transfer Service.  We do not charge for domain transfers for the first year.       Back to top

How many e-mail accounts do I get with my account ?

Up to 100 email addresses are available with your account.  More email boxes are available by request.  We can also set up a 'catchall' account so if someone sends mail to an email address that does not exist under your domain name, the message will be forwarded to a default mail box that you specify.  Also you may forward any or all of your accounts to another e-mail address.       Back to top

EarthSkater built my web site and I need to make some updates what does it cost ?

You have a few options when it comes to website maintenance packages.  We can do the work on an individual basis on an hourly rate.  [$70 / hour for website design, custom graphic design, SEO / online marketing, and HTML changes and $100 / hour for website programming, database management, and technical consulting].  We will always give you a time/cost quote before carrying out work.  If you have a website that requires frequent or regular updates then we can either negotiate a discounted maintenance plan or you can use our Content Management Web Hosting package so you can update the site yourself easily and quickly whenever you want.        Back to top

How do I pay ?

We have a number of different plans and options - you can pay when ordering via credit card or choose to be invoiced. You can also pay by check or money order or pay using Virtual Check     Back to top

We have hundreds of items in our product range, how can we include them all in our site ?

For a large product catalogue we would build your site around a products database, this way the pages the visitor sees can be built 'on the fly' from information in the database depending on the criteria entered by the visitor.       Back to top

How can I see statistics on my visitors ?

All web sites that we build include a real time statistics package that allows you to view at any time the number of visitors to your site, the pages viewed and how they were referred to your site. For hosting customers your visitor log files are available to be viewed from your Report area.      Back to top

How long will it take to set up my account ?

Due to the time it takes for a newly registered domain to become live or for a transferred domain to propagate new hosting accounts / email accounts are usually operational in around 24 hours. Building a web site typically takes between 3 to 6 weeks - a projected finish date will be included in your quote.       Back to top

Will my web pages load quickly ?

Yes ! This is one of our prime considerations when designing web sites - typically we design pages with load times around 5-10 seconds.       Back to top

EarthSkater built our web site - who owns it ?

You do! - You will always own and hold the copyright to your website content.  Earth Skater retains the exclusive license and rights to it's software and you as a licensee receive a single domain license for unlimited usage.       Back to top

Do we have to sign a contract ?

We do not require clients to sign a contract in most circumstances, however by placing an order the client is deemed to have agreed to our terms and conditions which appear on all quotes and invoices.       Back to top

How will people find our site ?

As part of a site build we will work with you to produce a list of key words and phrases for the search engines. We will then optimize the pages for these keywords and phrases to ensure a good listing in the search engines.       Back to top

Where can I see examples of your work ?

A number of our clients site are featured in our Portfolio.       Back to top

Can EarthSkater help us with the sites written content ?

Yes ! We have a great deal of experience in writing copy for clients sites, we can reformat existing text or produce copy from scratch based on the information you supply.  Our writing staff  is creative and their talent is helping you to get your message across to your visitors on the Internet.        Back to top

Do I really need a website ?

Only you can answer this question - however there are many functions a web site can perform - advertising, product support, online sales, customer contact and many more.  For many companies having a web site has actually saved them a great deal of money - rather than sending potential customers expensive printed literature and product catalogues they can now refer them to their web site. For some companies, once their web site is established it quickly becomes their main source of enquiries, new customers and revenue.       Back to top

I've seen in the news many reports of .com failures - do web sites really work ?

Yes they do - the site you're reading now is proof of this. The recent rash of .com failures is down to flawed business plans and over hyping of the Web in the past few years to a level that could not be sustained. While the 'headline' .coms drop like flies the normal company sites quietly carry on generating new clients and sales for their owners.       Back to top

How do I get more visitors to my site ?

You need a two pronged attack - firstly you must optimize your website content for your target market (keywords).  Next, promote your site online by submitting to search engines.  Get instant traffic by advertising using PayPerClick (PPC) such as Google Adwords or Overture.  Finally, you must have useful and fresh content that people want to see - the greatest looking site will not hold a visitors interest without some substance to the content.       Back to top

Do you have an acceptable use policy ?

We do - it is include in our standard terms and conditions, basically we ban pornography, racist materials, illegal or unlicensed software and sending 'spam' from our servers - these policies are for your protection and ours and we will always enforce the terms and conditions if we are made aware of an infringement.       Back to top

Can visitors access my site with or without the WWW. ?

Yes, your site is available at http://yourdomain.com and http://www.yourdomain.com.       Back to top

What FTP clients can I use ?

Any FTP client should work with our servers - for clients new to FTP we recommend CuteFTP - a trial version can be downloaded here.       Back to top

I have an EarthSkater hosting account - do I have access to my log files ?

Visitor log files are available inside the logs or 'w3svc###' directory in your FTP account.       Back to top

Do you provide a cgi-bin ?

We do - the servers run a perl interpreter. The cgi-bin is provided to provide legacy support for any .cgi scripts in your site but we do actively discourage the use of .CGI files where possible. Anything that can be done in a .cgi script can be done as well or better using Windows native scripting language .asp and places a much lower load on the servers.       Back to top

Will others have access to my files ?

By definition anything you place in your wwwroot folder will be available to people though your website - the exception to this is .asp scripts where if called from a browser will return the result of the script and not the script source itself - any information that you do NOT want visitors to access should be placed in your 'Private' directory where it can be referenced from the scripts in your site. Nobody but you will have FTP access to your files unless you give them the username and password.       Back to top

How much disk space do I get ?

The hosting accounts begin around 500MB - this is a huge amount for a website and few people ever use more than 50MB or so for their sites. 50MB is enough for approximately 2000 web pages including graphics and databases!       Back to top

How much bandwidth do I get ?

The hosting accounts begin at 10 GB per month total data transfer, again this is a huge amount for a typical site - equivalent to approximately 500,000 page views a month!       Back to top

Can I resell my web space ?

No, your account is for your use only.       Back to top