CAN I STILL HAVE A FREE SITE?

Yes. You will be limited to 250Mb of storage space (but pages and posts remain unlimited).

You cannot have your domain mapped and if you want to use domain forwarding you will have to acquire your own security certificate.

I ALREADY HAVE A DOMAIN CAN I KEEP MY FREE SITE?

If you manage your own domain registry we will allow you to keep your site for 1 Year. After that we would ask you to consider the entry level plan – the “One Plan”. Alternatively you can downgrade and we will remove the domain mapping. Your site and all the content will still be available. Bear in mind that domain forwarding still may require a security certificate to be purchased.

If we manage your domain registry we would expect you to join the mid-level “More” plan.

CAN YOU HELP ME MOVE MY SITE ELSEWHERE?

Yes. We’ll give you instructions on how to export  all your content as xml and then reimport it on your own hosting or local server including how to reimport your media files (we’ll need your IP address to allow it through our firewall).

If we manage the domain for you, let us know when you are ready and we’ll transfer the name servers or IP address to your new host. At that point we’ll decommission the old site and make it private. Then we’ll initiate the transfer of the domain to your preferred registry provider. With this approach you should experience no down time at all.

CAN I CANCEL A PLAN?

Yes. But we cannot credit you with any unused time.

CAN I BUY HELP – I NEED HANDHOLDING?

Yes. Many of our users are not experts and many have gotten a long way without any help or support. However, if you are new to websites or want some hands on familiarisation / training, we can arrange a session. Booking a session can help concentrate the mind and even with a vague plan of action it is amazing what can be achieved in a few hours or a single day. With media assets, branding and content ready to go – we can help you get up and running very fast.

CAN YOU EXPLAIN THIS TO ME?

Websites on Our Locality have had the hosting side subsidised for the last 8 years.

With growing server running costs, the 2 fold backup regime, archive disk rental + IP address, recurring software licences, it all adds up.

We offer domain management services, renewals and free security certificates (ssl), much of which requires manual intervention.

Although many of the softwares we employ are open source, they are not necessarily free and certainly not maintenance-free.

We endeavour to keep everything up to date, with security updates applied daily and major releases applied within a few days of the release.

With ever more dependencies to keep on top of, this is inevitably time consuming, moreover we are often tending to things while you sleep and almost every day of the year.

IS MY SITE SECURE?

Defending the site from hackers and investigating problems and issues arising now takes up much more time than it used to.

Keeping softwares up to date helps us combat many security issues. If you have an older template or rely on functionality that has no current support, we will intervene and give advice.

We have several means of defending your sites from brute force password attacks, blocking bad IP addresses, preventing more sophisticated attacks and controlling SPAM.

We provide a free SSL certificate if you have a domain or subdomain mapped.

Our setup is designed to help you with GDPR compliance.

ANY QUESTIONS?

Drop us a line – ourlocality@sustainingdunbar.org.