Frequently Answered Questions

A: Please see our page on Getting Files to Us.

A: This answer assumes you are keeping the same email address, but moving from your old service provider to your new account hosted through us.

• First, you'll want to make sure you have your mail downloaded.
• Now, forward your accounts to a backup email account (or set them to send a copy of your messages to the backup). This will ensure that you don't miss any messages between the last time you access your old account and the time your new account goes live.
• With that done, it's time to point your domain to the new host. To do this, change the nameservers on your domain to:
  • NS1.GRAYCZYK.COM
  • NS2.GRAYCZYK.COM
• It will take up to 72 hours for the change to fully take effect (it usually takes around 24). In the meantime you should be able to send mail from your old account. Periodically check http://mail.yourdomain.com. When it has changed to the new service (or loads a page, if your old webmail wasn't at that address), your new mail should be fully operational. You should have received an email from us describing how to re-configure your mail program(s) and use your new accounts.
• If you can't set forwarding on your old server, let us know when you usually recieve the least amount of email and we'll work to get your new account active during that time. If this is the case and you won't have access to your old webmail system through an IP or other address, a few lost messages may be unavoidable.
• For more information on how to set up many common email programs please visit our email setup guide.

A: If you're using the correct server and account information, your Internet connection may have momentarily went down, the connection to the server may have been interrupted, or the server may be temporarily down for maintenance. If a connction is lost to the server, some email clients may also need to be closed and re-opened before normal email activity can be resumed. If we're providing your email services and the problem is recurring or lasts for more than several minutes, please let us know the time & nature of the problem and we'll resolve it as quickly as possible.

Before contacting us, please check your internet connection. This can be most simply done by attempting to load one or more websites that are not owned or managed by us. Google and MSN are good places to start. If you can't access them, then your internet connection is likely down and should be taken up with your ISP.

A: Usually this is due to one of 3 problems: 1) You may have momentarily lost your Internet connection (or your ISP may have momentarily lost its Internet connection); 2) The server may be temporarily down for maintenance; or 3) Code on your site may have been incorrectly altered, resulting in an error. If you know your ISP is not to blame and we developed and/or are hosting your site and the problem persists for more than a few minutes, please let us know the time and nature of the problem & we'll resolve it as quickly as possible.

A: Are you kidding? Yes! We're not just saying this because we're web developers either. The Internet is the number one place people go to find out about anything. Consider this... what is the one feature that is common across every well-designed ad nowadays? Answer: a website address. This makes any ad hold a near infinite amount of information. Even if you strictly do business in your local area, a website can give your customers all the information they need to be sold on you without having to physically shop around. You'll also get more done because you will be spending less time fielding inquiries. These are just a couple reasons you should get a website... for more information, see our Web Design page, complete our Free Quote Form, or give us a call for a free consultation.

A: Absolutely not!! In fact, since most mobile devices tend to have rather finger-unfriendly keypads, you want to keep mobile users' typing to a minimum. Why the new "mobile" TLD has 4 letters instead of two or three is beyond us. If your mobile site is going to be a version of your main website, but with content and formatting specifically geared towards mobile users, we can code your main site to automatically deliver mobile content to mobile users. Then mobile users won't have to remember a standard address and a mobile address for you.

A: Here are a few real scenarios we've heard over the years. If you can relate to one or more of them, a redesign is probably a good idea...

• "My current website was designed several years ago and hasn't been touched since."
• "My nefew took a class in high school & designed my site for free."
• "One of my employees put it together during his downtime using FrontPage, Publisher, or something like that."
• "I don't ever tell anyone to go to my site because it's embarrassing."
• "I get complaints or negative comments about my site."
• "My site takes way too long to load."
• "My competitors all have much better sites than mine."
• "I can't get my site to show up on a search for anything."

A: Sure, but hiring an outside firm can be better because:

• An outside firm is in a much better position of being able to design your site with the general public in mind. You might omit content that visitors might benefit from because you think the information is obvious... or your staff may word things in a manner that is too technical for the general public. We can more effectively study your entire industry from a consumer's perspective and develop your site accordingly.
• Unless you run a news site or a busy online store, it is probably far more economical to let us handle everything. A good employee dedicated to your web site will cost at least $40,000 a year in salary alone. Factoring other costs such as high-end computer equipment necessary for quality design work, all the necessary software, furnature and office space (even if it's just a cubicle), you're looking at another $10,000 or more. That's not even factoring in other costs like bonuses, insurances, etc.
  
  On the other hand, you could be paying a mere $5,000 for the initial website, and up to $4,000 a year for maintenance! And that figure will get you a respectable amount of website, and some fanatical dedication too (and you don't have to worry about us spending half our time wasting your resources to look for a better job either)!

A: Perhaps the most important thing you can do before you get your website development underway is to ensure that you have anything relevant to your site together. You can never have too much raw material. Materials to consider include text, brochures, logos, concepts, etc.

A: Absolutely. But in some cases, if it was built by one of your employees or by another firm, some modifications to the code may be necessary first. Please see our page on Website Maintenance.

A: Sure. We have a number of solutions available depending on what content you want to update, how much content needs to be updated, and your knowledge of programming. Our Website Management Consoles are made-to-order, password-protected systems built into your website that make updating your site as simple as typing into a form and clicking the save button!

You may also want to consider our Maintenance Plans. Our website maintenance plans free you up to run your business. On your end, updates are as simple as sending us an email. Another benefit of our website maintenance plans is that you don't have to hire and maintain one or more employees to do this for you. This saves you tens of thousands of dollars a year!

A: Sounds like an odd question, but it's actually quite common to hear in our area. If we're currently in the market for whatever it is you do, maybe. It can't hurt to ask us. When you fill out our Quote Form, type "TRADE?" in the promo code field (#6.4), and list the services you're offering in one of the following fields: 2.9, 3.2, 4.1, or 5.1 (depending on what kind of work you're looking for). For your convenience, the above link to our quote form will open in a new window so this can easily be referenced.

A: Your company is unique. Your needs are unique. What you might want in your website or other project is unique. Naturally, the quote for your site will be just as unique. Although loosely based on an hourly rate, there are a number of factors that go into coming up with your quote; and the quote you recieve is a firm, flat rate that will not change unless your requirements change. If you're ready for a quote, click here.

A: Not unless you're willing to pay us for that investment of time and resources. If your project is of substantial size (budget of at least $10,000), and we have a sales rep in your local area, we can send him/her out to your office to discuss your project with you.

If you're not willing to pay those expenses, and a sales rep is not available, please complete our quote form, and we will get you a quote as quickly as possible. Rest assured, your project is in capable hands even if we are unable to meet with you in person. We have been doing what we do nationwide and beyond for many years without ever meeting many of our customers in person.

A: Unless specifically requested to do otherwise, all of our ecommerce quotes include a custom, hand-coded shopping cart, built specifically around your needs, your products, and your payment processing service(s).

We advise against using common, canned solutions, because it will be obvious and tends to look a bit cheap, but if you really want us to implement something like osCommerce, we can... but it is far more reliable to use a custom solution - and it looks much better too.

A: Please see our page on Search Engine Optimization.

A: As far as we can tell, they pose no threat to Google as the king of search. In our experience with trying them out, what they appear to be good at is returning very old, outdated, and irrelevant pages in search results. The "binoculars" tool is gimmicky, and the spider that captures those screenshots shows Flash as a broken image. Not only that, the screenshot of our site hasn't been updated in over a year now, and as of this writing, they still apparently refuse to dignify our removal requests with a response. But most importantly, results often return more distracting paid ads than legitimate search results!

A: Sure. But it's often hard to see where the line is between a regular question about a service we're providing and plain old business consulting. The latter is a separate, billable service we provide. To help make this line a little easier to identify, here are just a few examples of questions that involve Business Consulting:

1. "Can you help me come up with a name for my company?"
2. "I'm starting a new company. I have a basic concept for what the business will do, but nothing else. Can you help me?"
3. "How can I revamp my service offering to get more of an edge over my competition?"
4. "Besides going on the web, can you help me cut costs and bring my 30 year old business into the 21st century?"
5. "I started a business a few years ago, but it's not doing very well. What can I do to avoid having to shut down?"

A: Dark backgrounds. Any pages on grayczyk.com that are designed to be printed will have a light background, or will have a link to a printer-friendly version.

Did you know that your monitor uses less energy to display dark web pages? Black is best. But in this latest version of grayczyk.com, we decided to lighten it up a little... Going just a little lighter not only still helps the world save energy, it now saves us some energy in not having to explain to so many people that ask us why our website is so dark.