Welcome to Websy Daisy!

This is important stuff, so please read ASAP!

(i.e., please go ahead and read it now and sign at the bottom)

Really, please read this.

It looks like a lot, but it will answer 99% of your questions. 

We love starting new projects! This page just explains some ways to make everything go as smoothly as possible. We work very efficiently – people who have worked with other designers who perhaps have 5 or 6 projects going on at the same time may expect it to take months to finish a web site. Since we only work on 1 or 2 projects at a time, we get a LOT done on your site every day – so your prompt attention to any emails we send is appreciated.

VERY IMPORTANT:

PLEASE START WORK ON YOUR CONTENT NOW! Have everything done and uploaded by the Friday before your Start Date AT THE LATEST. Please do not wait until the weekend before to start writing/compiling! Let us know if you have everything ready early—sometimes we have a spot open up and would love to offer it to you!

If you are not ready on your start date, we can’t start your project! You will be moved back to the next available opening in my schedule, which could be months away, and you will be charged a rescheduling fee per the terms of the contract.

If you need to reschedule your Start Date ahead of time, you MUST do so more than 30 days before your start date or you will be charged a rescheduling fee! The fees are listed in your contract. Note that we are currently scheduling over 3 months out, so if you reschedule, there may be a long wait for another spot.

Notes About Features:

If you ask for a feature that we did not discuss when I was quoting the total cost for the site, there may be an additional fee. If it is a feature I can add for you, I will let you know the additional cost before I implement it. If it is a feature you saw on a site I did not build, there is a small possibility it is not something I can do for you, but we can discuss alternatives.

Notes About Design:

You do NOT need to know exactly how you want it all to look! That’s my job. Please do not panic if you don’t have a clear idea! (BUT if you do have a specific thing you want, please tell me. I have been called a mind reader, but I’m really truly not.) All I need is something to start with. I prefer you search stock sites like istockphoto.com and shutterstock.com for an image/images that feel like you, and include links to them with your notes. (Please do not send me links to things on Pinterest or Etsy.)  You can also give me a general idea of things you love, links to other sites you like, anything at all to help me start in the right direction. If you haven’t already, read this page about illustration.

FONTS: If you like, you can also search sites like adobe.fonts.com or Google Fonts to see if anything grabs you as the perfect font for your name, BUT you DO NOT HAVE TO. Only do it if it is fun for you. 😉 I prefer not to receive notes about fonts you have used in Canva or found on freebie font sites, as those fonts are generally not available in the right formats for web design.

Are you commissioning illustration from an artist? Read here for some guidelines.

Organize Your Content:

It will make things run a lot more easily with many fewer questions and opportunities for mistakes if you organize your content. Create a folder for each page of your site, and inside each folder put your text content for that page, any photos or other images you want on that page, and any notes you might have about what you are expecting/hoping to see on that page. You might also include a Logos folder containing any logo files (if applicable), and a Notes folder that contains all of your logins, even if you think we already have them (please test them first to make sure they work!), notes about the design, or any other miscellaneous information you think I might need.

NOTE: Please do not use Dropbox’s Commenting feature to leave comments on files — your files are synced to a folder on my computer, and the comments do not attach, so I will never see them. All comments should be in your notes.

Notes about Text Content:

1. Text needs to be provided in final form – i.e., it should be proofread and spell checked and looked over by several pairs of eyes. If you plan to have your agent or friends or anyone else review the content, this should be done before it is provided to me. Changing the content after I build the site will incur additional fees.
2. You can send the text in Word or Pages or in a plain text document. Please don’t do any formatting to the text aside from bold or italics.
3. Please do not send the text as a pdf (unless you are offering your visitors a pdf to download), a Google Doc, a Dropbox Paper doc, an image, in PowerPoint, or in any other format other than Word, Pages, or plain text. 
4. Please do not use the notes or commenting feature in Word or Pages or Dropbox —all text, notes, comments, and links should be plainly visible in the content. Also please turn off track changes.
5. Please do not copy the text from a webpage unless you know how to strip out all of the extra formatting. There should be no photos, or fancy fonts, or colors, etc., applied. Just plain old text with bold or italics, if necessary.
6. Text should be sent as one document per page. Please include all info for that page in that one document, including any notes, links, captions for photos (if applicable), etc.
7. Even if your text is not changing from your old website, we still need the text provided as a Word, Pages, or plain text file. (Exception, if I am importing your blog, I do not need the blog posts, just the login to the old blog. Note that I do not reformat old blog posts, they will have the same formatting as on your old site.)
8. Just use one space between sentences and one return between paragraphs. Two spaces leaves odd gaps and can cause wrapping issues.
9. If you are providing any links, such as to articles on other sites, etc, if at all possible go ahead and link the text yourself in Word or Pages, and PLEASE include the https:// or http:// at the beginning.
   (EXCEPTION: For SOCIAL MEDIA and BOOKSTORES (links to buy your book), PLEASE give us the link rather than linking the text.  Please provide the entire link, not just your username.)
   Please check ALL links before providing them to ensure they actually work.
10. If you have a bullet list or numbered list in your text, please go ahead and use the tools in Word or Pages to create a list. If you instead manually type in bullets or numbers, I just have to go back though and delete them all.

Notes about Photos and other images:

1. Photos should be jpgs and should be at least as large as you will need them to appear on screen. We can scale photos down to a smaller size, but cannot make them larger without them losing quality.
2. Photos should be separate files, not pasted into a Word document.
3.  If you are providing any illustrations, the preferred format is a vector file, which usually ends in .ai or .eps.
4. Please avoid sending anything in tiff, gif, or heic format if at all possible.
5. PLEASE do not send me a link to a photo-sharing site. We need the actual photo files.
6. Note that even if your photos are on your old website, we still need all of the jpgs. (Exception: if we are importing your blog, we do not need the photos from your blog posts as they will import along with the text.)
7. Photos should be clearly labeled and organized so that we know what their intended purpose is. Sending a folder full of files with names like img02345z.jpg makes it really hard to discern what belongs where.
8. Photos should be in their final form — we do not do retouching or any photo manipulation. We will only scale and crop them.
9. If you are providing graphics from another designer, we vastly prefer receiving them in their original format if they were created in Photoshop or Illustrator.
10. Please be sure than you have permission to use any photos or other content that you send me. You cannot take a photo you find in an image search on Google and use it on your site. You cannot take a photo from someone else’s website unless you get explicit permission from the owner of that photo to do so. We will use your content assuming you are not breaking any copyright restrictions. I have professional accounts with istockphoto.comand shutterstock.com and thus can download their images at a discount, and they are excellent sources for stock images.

Note about Videos:

If you have any videos for the site, please upload them to either YouTube or Vimeo and just provide the links, not the video file.

Notes about Third-Party Apps:

I do not set up any third-party applications you might decide to use, with the exception of Mailchimp. If you are using some other newsletter service or any other tool you want to integrate with your website, I am happy to add a link to it or add code that service might provide to you, but I don’t login to or set up anything within those services. I WILL login and set up your website hosting and am happy to do some simple setup in Mailchimp for you, if applicable.

Your Handy Checklist!

We need:

• Logins for your hosting and domain registration EVEN IF YOU BELIEVE WE ALREADY HAVE THEM—make sure to double check them yourself!* I may have told you when we first spoke that you needed to get web hosting, either because you don’t have a site yet, or your current site is on something like Squarespace, Wix, or Weebly. You will need to sign up for that new hosting and upload that login with your content.
• Your company logo, if you have one, preferably in vector format
• FINAL text content for every page of your site
• Any photos for your site, labeled so we know where they go
• Full links to any social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc) that you want on the site
• Any information you can share about what you want to see in the design
• Everything organized and uploaded to the specific Dropbox that we shared with you.

* Seriously, please double check and TEST your logins and include them in your Dropbox. We spend a whole lot of time chasing down missing logins or trying to get the correct logins—time that we’d much rather spend creating your new website!

** REALLY, please. I have to have the logins to both your hosting and your domain registration (they might be at the same login). The time to figure this out is not after I contact you telling you I still don’t have your logins. 😉

Important Notes

• During the time we are working on your site, we may send you frequent emails with questions that need to be answered in order to continue. Please check your email frequently during this time (several times during the day), and send replies ASAP.
• If you plan to be on vacation without email or otherwise out of pocket during the week of your start date, please let us know ASAP so that we can reschedule.
• Your contract spells out exactly what we are doing for you for the agreed fee – if you decide you need to add pages or new features, we are happy to add them for you, but there will be additional hourly fees. We will always inform you of any additional costs before we do the work to make sure you really want the additions.

How to Use Dropbox