Our Guiding Principles

Your technician/designer will always be forthright and honest

Where others may pat you on the head and tell you it will all be okay, I think you can handle it. In fact, I think you need to handle it – enough of ‘it’ to make an informed decision. I believe in this so much, that my biggest weakness has become over-explaining things, and then confusing the heck out of some of you. No, thats not the best approach, but I’m still finding the balance between keeping you in the loop VERSUS simplifying the geek-eze.

You can have a GREAT site within your budget.

Anything is possible with your website. If you dream it, you can build it – BUT – at what cost? This is where my knowledge of both design and coding can save a bundle of money.For example, where others might charge you for custom-coding your desired function, I think you have several choices:

custom code for function A $$$
Styling to mimic function A $$
a plugin to do 50% of function A $

Sometimes a compromise is absolutely the best way to go, until you make 6 figures from your ventures and come back for that dream-site. :) Alternatively, if the only way to get to your six figures is the dream-site, who am I to say, no?
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Your website should be properly licensed.

This may sound a bit like red tape, but it is SO important. One of the primary reasons that I choose to keep working online is to help educate small businesses on the importance of the “red tape”.

Let me explain with an illustration -

When we buy a house, we go to a lawyer who checks the legalities of the current owner – does he actually have the right to sell the house? Then he checks on the legalities of the property – is it legally his or are their liens on it? Is the property that we are all talking about, the same property as is referenced in the sale document? Once those checks are made, you go about all the financial stuff to complete the sale.

The scary thing with most small website owners is that they skip all the legalities and go straight to buying the ‘property’!

How to Tell if Your Website is Properly Licensed:

Is the domain name registrar properly accredited by ICANN?

Too many people are paying for domains that are not legally theirs. Those who purchased a domain name from DSWP are registered with Enom, and the agreement with ICANN is described here.

Are you the registrant for the domain name?

You can check that information at www.who.is. You should also have access to the registrar’s control panel for your domain name.

Are you paying for your space ortheir space with your web hosting dollars?

This means that you do not technically have your own account – you are sub-letting a smaller hosting account from a bigger one. You can tell if you are ‘sub-letting’ by logging into your cpanel. A lot of hosting resellers don’t give you a control panel - they “help” you with that. If you do not have access to a cpanel, you are likely ‘sub-letting’ someone else’s hosting account.

This is similar to sub-letting an apartment. If the ‘real’ apartment owner screws up and gets kicked out, so do you. Check with your Primary Service Provider for cpanel access – this is not the same thing as ftp access.

Customer Service in this industry is more important than air.

The competition is fierce for your design dollars. There are some really great artists and designers and copywriters out there. Frankly, some are better than I in one, two, or all three areas. The thing that sets DSWP (me) apart from the pack is my commitment to the person behind the business. At the end of the day, we all still must go home and live in the real world. We need connections that understand our humanity. Are you having a tough day? Is that design concept just not working for you? That’s okay.

Have you been working for hours on that one plugin and just can’t figure it out?

I’m available by email for clients’ free support requests*

Did you like that line there when we created the theme, but its getting on your nerves now?

I will make adjustements to the theme for 48 hours after installation at no cost.

Are you afraid to be “set free” with your new website?

How about a maintenance plan and retainer service?

Follow Along

You can also find me at my Gluten Free Food blog. I’d love to tweet with you!! @dswordpress & @multimom, and I facebook probably way to much!!

My Friend & Founding Partner

My friend and founding partner of Desperately Seeking WordPress- the author of Desperately Seeking Sanity:

My name is Heather and I’m a blogaholic.

Moreover, I love to help others find a blogging platform that they truly love. For me, that’s WordPress. And while WordPress seems like it’s hard… it’s not. Seriously. I’ve worked with many people who think that they are technology challenged, and can manage to do some pretty nifty things with WordPress.

Through this blog, I hope to not only provide you with the information you’re looking for about WordPress but be the one that you think of whenever you need a little help!