Websites and Hosting FAQs

Yes, it’s part of the service that we offer. Your webspace can either be provided empty, in preparation for your own website build, or we can pass it over to you with WordPress installed, ready for you to get stuck in.

Not by default, no, but we can. WordPress comes with a number of solid themes that are perfect for customising, or there are many WordPress theme sites with versatile, easily customisable themes. We can happily make recommendations as to the best sources for themes, but the choice is yours, and you can either go ahead and install the theme on your own or ask us to perform the installation for you as long as it’s straight-forward.

Of course, it’s your site.  Please remember to keep all plugins up-to-date, though, as out-of-date plugins can cause security issues.  If you have out-of-date plugins, or your WordPress installation itself needs updated, you will be notified when you log in to the back-end of your site.  We also offer an additional WordPress maintenance service where we will perform all the upgrades/patches and keep your plugins current – please see the prices for optional extras on the main hosting page.

Absolutely not.  Your webspace is yours to promote your business, and you can opt to build your own site, have someone else build a site for you, or use a content-management platform to make things easier.  WordPress just happens to be a global standard, with a vast array of plugins and addons, as well as themes and developers, and these all serve to make it the natural choice for most.  The AuthorPackages website itself is a WordPress build.

Yes, you are more than welcome. We aren’t just an author-only service. We welcome anyone, whether they are authors, bloggers, reviewers, book-news sites, or even outside the book community and publishing industry.

Yes, as part of our hosting service, we consider it essential to perform daily backups on our dedicated backup server.

Generally speaking, as many as you’d like.  Technically speaking, as many as can possibly be created based on the number of permutations between the number of permitted characters and the number of letters/numbers available.  Sensibly speaking, you wouldn’t ever need more than just one or two – a general info email, a personal email, and if you wanted to separate it out, a different one for marketing/publicity enquiries.

There is no bandwidth restriction, per se, but if your traffic reaches levels where it affects the performance of other hosting clients then we will look into what is causing the bottleneck as it could be something like a poorly optimised site that simply needs image compression, or that you’re hosting video that’s being viewed excessively.  Once we know why, we’ll drop you a line and discuss what can be done, but we certainly won’t shut your site off if you just attract heavy traffic.

Absolutely.  While many may be under the impression that it’s acceptable for any content to be stored on a server, we have a reputation to think about and won’t tolerate anything that is displaying pornographic images, hate speech (religious or racial bigotry), images of animal abuse, child abuse, torture or other sexual violence, the selling of illegal substances, and information on hacking.  In that respect, we’re no different from most hosting providers.

After your initial hosting payment, which is taken on signing up for our service, you will be billed at the start of every month via PayPal. This fee will be an automatic recurring payment and you don’t have to do anything once you’ve signed up.

You are free to cancel your hosting service at any time, with one month’s notice. Just get in touch and let us know you want to leave.

For the standard package, we will build a website for you on the WordPress platform, either using a theme of your choosing or we’ll provide an initial draft design by customising an existing theme that will work with your particular style and genre.  The site will be no more than five regular pages, plus a contact form, and we will perform basic search engine optimisation on whatever content you submit to be used within the site’s pages.

Nobody knows you, and your books, better than you do yourself.  While we can guide you in terms of grammar, syntax, and readability, it would be difficult for us to write all your content from scratch without knowing enough about you. It’s therefore best if you write your own and we’ll make whatever changes we feel are necessary, but will run them by you first.

Absolutely not.  We’re trying to make it as simple and affordable as possible for authors to be professionally represented online, so while our website design package is a set fee of £600 / $750, you have the option of paying it as a lump sum, or spreading the cost evenly over a twelve-month period.  The choice is entirely yours.

As with any agreement involving a payment scheme, the goods (in this case, your website) remains our property until such times as the final balance has been cleared.  If you decide at any point to stop making payments, we will give you the opportunity to make up the shortfall before ultimately taking the site offline.  If we have to do this, you will forfeit your right to continue spreading the payments and the site will remain offline until such times as the remaining balance is paid, at which point we will reinstate the site for you without prejudice.

As soon as your final balance has been cleared in full, ownership transfers to you and you’re free to take it elsewhere if you’d prefer, or you can continue to have it hosted on our servers.  We will, of course, still be here for any ongoing support and questions you may have, and won’t simply walk away from you.

Sure, absolutely.  If you are paying for your site design and build in a lump sum after completion, then you can host it wherever you like.  If your plan is to make monthly payments to cover the cost of the site build, we will need to host it on our own servers.  This is to ensure that we have full control over its visibility so that we are covered in the event of non payment.

While it’s entirely unlikely, as we want to ensure that our clients are happy and that we’re also happy in our work, there may come a time where we (or the client) feels as though things can’t continue.  Potential scenarios would be where the client is unsure of what they want and has an “IKIWISI” (I’ll know it when I see it) approach to design where they’ll ask to see a certain cover; then, if they don’t like it, they’ll ask for another, and this could end up going on for weeks or even months.  In this case, it wouldn’t make sense for either party to continue because it’s clear we’re just not a good fit for each other.  Another scenario would be that the conversations become barbed and unpleasant for whatever reason. It makes for a tough relationship overall, especially if attempts have been made to diffuse the situation and it hasn’t worked.

In cases such as these, we are happy to walk away and take a hit for whatever work was done and however much time was spent on the project until that point.  The most important thing for us is that the client loves our work and we love working with the client; creative projects are much smoother when all parties involved are happy, and there’s no tension or antagonism, so when this harmony breaks down there comes a point where the only solution is to dissolve the relationship.

Whatever money has been paid up until that point will be refunded in full, unless any work has been completed. If the client has gone beyond the point where stock images were purchased and the cover has already been rebuilt with licensed stock images (whether we have the final page count or not), we’d not be able to refund as we’ve completed that part of the project and have purchased items on the client’s behalf.  If this is the case, the client could end the project early and take whatever has been paid for up until that point.  However, this is with the agreement that anything provided by us up until that point (artwork, concepts that were our own, formatting, and any edited work) outwith this is not used for anything in the future.  If the client wishes to use anything that has been supplied up until that point, payment in full will be necessary in order to release the required files to be used freely by the client in perpetuity.

Unfortunately, that’s not really something we can answer, as PayPal will determine the actual amount themselves based on the current rate of exchange.  When we list our prices, we do so in Pounds Sterling (GBP).  This is because we’re based in the UK and will therefore be billing out in Sterling.  We do also include an approximate value in US Dollars, but that value may be very different from what you will actually pay, as our approximations aren’t checked against current exchange rates.  If you would like to know an exact value for our services in your own currency, we would advise either calling your own bank or using an online currency exchange site such as xe.com, but please remember that their rates won’t be the same as PayPal.  Regardless, if our price is shown as £200 GBP, then we will invoice you for exactly £200 GBP.