Support

FAQS

Buying and Selling

We need to establish an initial relationship with the customer to verify who it is we're dealing with. This is typically done via a £6 Domain Name order and an online card transaction. Once this is in place, typically we deal on a "pay by invoice on completion" basis.

No. The whole point of managed services is that we provide the IT expertise allowing you to focus on your business. You still need to be able to operate your own computer equipment, but this is not a function or feature of using our managed services.

In order to sell online in a technical context you need two things. Firstly a site or platform from which to sell, this could either be a WordPress site or a Forum site. Both of which come with online selling plugins. Secondly you will need access to one or more payment gateways such as Stripe or Paypal.

If you are running an online shop or online subscription service, when a client makes a payment (which implies places an order) the payment gateway will send you a notification email containing details of the transaction.

You may also see details of the order in your WordPress of Forum plugin, but you should be able to see comprehensive details of the transaction and customer on the payment gateway console.

We will always quote our fees in writing in advance. 

Support

Once the service is installed it becomes a part our monitored estate. If we see any technical issues we will rectify them automatically. If we see any environmental issues such as security updates, DDOS attacks etc, we will deal with them automatically. If we see resource issues will will attempt to mitigate any immediate problems and then notify you of the issue together with mitigation options. For example if you're running out of space on your forum server, would you like to archive old messages, reduce the number of backups kept on the server, or pay for a little extra storage.

This is a relatively easy and seamless process, should you want to do this we could help as best we can, no additional fees would be involved.

Our standard products are aimed at small to medium sized businesses running business oriented websites. We can however cope with far larger requirements on request, to date our busiest site was running up to 25,000 (real) requests per second at peak. (real, is as there were real requests and not part of some sort of exploit or attack)

We have telephone numbers, chat channels and feedback forms. We also have online status displays so you can double check your experience with electronic monitors. It may be that the problem is either being dealt with already, or a local issue for you.

We can attempt to deal with other issues if you have a general support contract. If you want us to look at issues that are beyond our remit, there may be an additional charge.

Products

Our charges generally reflect the work we're doing and the charges that we incur when providing technical services. (for example,  hosting fees)

Software we use in the course of providing these services is generally Open Source and has no direct associated cost. (although we may contribute to or sponsor specific projects from time to time)

The answer is that if you wish to configure and manage all these services yourself, you don't! What you're paying for is our time in the present, actually configuring and managing, and our time in the past, gaining the experience to be able to configure and manage.

Well, if you have an Android phone you're using Open Source software. If you have a Smart Television, set-top box, router etc at home, you're almost certainly using something that is either running on Open Source software or has Open Source software in it's supply chain.

If you've viewed a single website today on the Internet, there's a 95%+ chance you've hit a server running an Open Source operating system. 

The point being, it forms either part or all of the eco-systems you're already using but don't necessarily recognise. So the answer is, as with any propriety software, it depends on the specific product in question.

In principle however, as you're already using it, I guess it's a case of, "try it, then decide".

If it's a product that would be generally useful to other clients or potential clients, we could consider adopting it as an additional product with fees akin to other proucts.

If on the other hand this is a bespoke solution just for one client, we would look at it purely on a time and materials basis.

There will be products that it would not be cost-effective for us to try to adopt, however typically these would be commercial products.

In terms of products we won't get involved with;

  • anything that is illegal in the UK
  • anything to do with pornography
  • bookmaking / gambling

Other than that we are believe in free speech and freedom of expression and would not look to impose on a client's business.

Encryption and Security

All sites we host are accessed (publicly) via SSL, which presents in a browser as https://. So when information leaves a user's browser (i.e. a URL or search query) it is encrypted, and when it arrives on your server it is automatically decrypted and fed into the server. The same happens in reverse when the server sends data back to the user. Data travelling through the internet is therefore encrypted. When we access systems for maintenance, a similar process is applied. We would encourage users to employ this mechanism when working with the Internet in any context.

End-to-end encryption is a private communication system in which only communicating users can participate. As such, no one, including the communication system provider, telecom providers, Internet providers or malicious actors, can access the cryptographic keys needed to converse. [Ref: Wikipedia]

So, Yes.

One of the aims of the bill appears to be wanting to give government agencies the ability to intercept and monitor private communications. Unfortunately end-to-end encryption is an integral part of the Internet and something without which the Internet cannot function. So the government can pass whatever legislation it likes, technically it's not going to be able to do what it appears to want to do with regards to adding "back-doors". The options would appear to be "leave it alone" or "turn everything off". As the latter really isn't an option, we don't consider the Bill a threat to business with regards to security or compromising security.

There is no such thing as impenetrable, and a chain is only as strong as it's weakest link. In that context, work as securely as is cost-effective for you, and have mitigation in available "just in case". Mitigation in terms of secure verified backups, and "if you don't want someone to read it, don't put it in writing". Generally a recommendation applied to emails, more recently applicable to government "WhatsApp" messages (!)

There are pro's and con's to all approaches, we're happy to discuss options and can implement the level of security that's right for you. This might be simply using SSL on websites and email servers, or you might want to go as far as VPN's secured by hardware keys.

Make Me Static

There are many benefits to serving up a static site rather than dynamic WordPress, specifically;

  • Performance - a static site should always be (a lot) faster
  • Resilience - a static site far more difficult to DDOS or break
  • Robustness - with a static site there's nothing to hack!
  • Snapshots - every published version of the site will be stored in Git
  • Scalability - static sites scale horizontally and infinitely
  • Costs - hosting static sites is often free or VERY cheap
  • Validation - edit WordPress, changes only go live when "Pushed"
  • A&B Testing - Run multiple public and preview static versions

This to an extent depends upon your site. If you are using WordPress as a design tool and your site is effectively static other than for updates and new pages, then there are very few downsides.

The more dynamic features you add to the site, the more problematic the static version becomes. The trick is to make sure the dynamic features are effectively implemented in Javascript so they continue to work on the Static version of the site.

  • Comments - if you don't use a Javascript plugin, the default Comments implementation is inefficient
  • Third party plugins - not all plugins are 'static friendly' and some can refuse to work on static sites

No idea, and even then the answer would be subjective. GitLab work Ok, CloudFlare pages work Ok and the performance seems better - but with CloudFlare please read the getting started notes as there's a "gotcha" to be aware of.

Absolutely. All you need is a little bit of scripting that will pull from the Git repository when a change is detected, then an instance of a web server (NGINX) to site on the checked out files.

(typically running in the cloud, somewhere with reasonable connectivity)

The process of crawling the site assembles static pages in your Git repository. There is always going to be a delay between getting those files from the Git repository re-positioned so they can be served by a web server.

If you host your own pages, typically all you need do it a "git pull" which would likely take a couple of seconds, then the new pages should be live.

Providers like GitLab and CloudFlare need to do a little "more" work and this process can often take 20-30 seconds.

This plugin only works with HTTPS and needs a publicly available URL in order for a crawler to be able to contact it. If you don't have a publicly available HTTPS URL, you will need to get one before you start.

If you are hosting your site on HTTP and using a VPN, Proxy or Cloudflare to provide your HTTPS facility, you will need to update your "Site Address" in settings to reflect this, otherwise the plugin not be aware of your public URL and hence still think it's running on HTTP.

Questions? Please get in touch!

It’s not possible to provide an answer in advance, so if we’ve not answered your question here, please let us know.

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