September 2008 News Updates
Birthday Special!
Itching to add more interactive features to your site ? Tired of your website's old look and feel? Want to manage your own content to the nth degree?
Until the 15th of October 2008 only - upgrade your html website to a dynamic website with loads of interactive features for 30% less than the normal cost!
A normal dynamic website starts at R7200, which includes 10 pages of content. Advanced designs and extra pages can inflate this price, but with up to 10 pages of content and a standard custom design, the price is fixed at R7200. With our September discount, this comes right down to R5040. Interested? - Give us a call before time marches away with you.
* Terms of offer
1. Any existing client who applies is elligible, whether you already have a website or not.
2. Unlike our prior discounted offers, there is no limit to the number of clients who can take up this offer.
3. Clients will only qualify if the offer is taken up and the order confirmed before October 15 2008.
4. A confirmed order is one on which 50% confirmation deposit has been received.
5. The discount does not apply to any dynamic website ordered before 25 September 2008.
6. Any website ordered in terms of this special offer must be fully commissioned within 3 months. In other words, you cannot order it now but only give us what we need to develop it in 4 months time. You must intend to go ahead with and complete the project immediately.
7. Completion time will depend upon how many orders we receive. First come will be first served. We will however provide you with a firm time quote upon enquiry. This will be valid for 48 hours, afterwhich it may change, depending on how many clients have signed up for the special in the interim.
8. The spec is limited to the features and functionality quoted in our Dynamic Website Overview. Additional features or major changes to existing features may bear an additional cost.
9. Does not apply to ecommerce websites.
Important for Ecommerce Merchants
If you are running an online shop then this information is critical to you. We have just learned that the banks are slamming down on online credit card processing and this could mean that you are going to have a problem trading without an online merchant account going forward.
We are in process of obtaining more information about this and will soon contact you directly with the implications and your options.
August 2008 News Updates
It's been a few months since we've posted new news! June saw one of our servers go down for 24 hours - the first time this has ever happened to us - and it was quite a challenge. All effected clients were given 100% credit, with the option of how to take this: free month's hosting, the next domain renewal free or free website upgrades.
What amazed us through this was the response that we received from 99.9% of our clients, who were incredibly supportive and understanding. Given that this was our first ever serious downtime we were not as prepared as we would have liked to have been in terms of client communications and this has led to new developments on our end.
The entire experience was however proof once again of how much positive can come out of an apparent negative situation. A huge thank you to all our clients.
During July we introduced 2 new servers, one of which is a private shared server. What this means is that this server is reserved for clients whom we know and for whom it is safe for us to relax some of our server limitations. This was implemented as a result of us seeing some of our trusted clients battling on the normal shared servers. Specifically this applies to clients who have large newsletters that go out, but whom we know without a doubt only do double opt-in and genuine, immediate removal of opt-outs.
The new server settings allows these clients to easily send out their mass emails without hassle or risk. July was largely dedicated to migrating these clients to this new server and ensuring that everything was working 100%.
Birthday Special
With all this activity in June and July we did not get around to introducing a birthday special in this period, so now it's time again ....
Throughout August, existing clients signing up for an additional domain will receive a lifetime of zero domain fees. This means that your original registration and annual renewals will be fully funded by us for as long as the domain is hosted with us, regardless of the hosting package that applies.
To take advantage of this offer, please sign up online (here, using your existing account information and the coupon code: lifedomain08
May 2008 News Updates
We are pleased to announce that all existing clients are now on the new package levels on all servers. If you log into your cpanel you will be able to see your new account allocations.
We were thrilled to see the response to our training launch, with our first SEO training course was being fully booked within the first week. We are aiming at running one of these per month from now on, but have had to make the dates TBA due to the rate at which bookings are coming in.
This proves to us however that the need for solid SEO information and training is becoming more and more felt as South African website owners become increasingly aware of how crucial it is to market a website properly if you want it to succeed.
May Birthday Special
For May we are extending a special offer to all our dedicated affiliate members. During May and June 2008 all active affiliates will receive Double their earnings on all new business signed up. To qualify you need do nothing other than refer the business and watch your earnings jump.
To assist you we have prepared a range of additional marketing materials for you to use especially for this period. All active affiliates will be emailed their May-June marketing pack within the next few days.
April 2008 News Updates
Once again there are major developments happening at Web Inn, all aimed at improving our services to you, our valued clients. In this news update:
:: Launch of Public Training Courses
:: 10th Birthday Celebration Giveaway
:: Behind the Scenes
New SEO and Website Development Training Courses
First of all, after more than a year of deliberating, we finally decided to take the plunge and launch a training initiative. Call us crazy, but we have decided to open up our in-house training to the public and give away the very information and skills that have made Web Inn a success. The bottom line is that our websites work and they work because of how we do what we do. Now anyone can learn these same techniques and skills to Build your own professional website or Do your own SEO. - Never again be bamboozled by all the emails, "gurus" and websites offering to make your site number 1.
Training programmes are run in exactly the same way that we do it with our own staff, using the exact same content. It is a policy of Web Inn that we only employ people who are completely green because we have found that it is more expensive and frustrating to take a "qualified" developer and un-teach them before we can train them, than to train someone who knows absolutely nothing to begin with.
This means that our training is aimed at the layman who has never done any form of coding or internet marketing before.
We currently offer two courses:
1. Website Marketing / SEO Training This is an intensive one day workshop where you will learn exactly how SEO works and learn exactly, step-by-step, how to successfully market your own website online. It also looks at all the myths, false hype, propaganda and sheer nonsense that is punted, while focussing on what really works. This is a practical course where you actually "do" rather than just look and listen. By the end of the day you will have assessed your own website and have all the steps clearly in place to take it to the next level. Read more ..
2. Professional Website Development Training This is a 4 day workshop that teaches participants how to properly hand code a website that is search engine friendly. This is a practical course where you "do as you learn" and by the end of the course, you will have created your first website from scratch. Read more ...
The next course that is on the cards is "successful ecommerce", which will probably launch in the second half of the year.
Birthday Celebration Giveaway
For the rest of 2008 we will be announcing one birthday giveaway or promotional offer in random months, starting with April. That's 8 months during which you will be getting more for your money.
The April celebration is a completely free account upgrade that applies to all clients who are on standard hosting packages. In some cases this equals a quota increase of 100%. This will phase in over the next month as we upgrade all packages across all our servers and adjust client accounts accordingly. Some clients will be moved across to new servers to ensure that the load is well-balanced between servers and all affected clients will be contacted before being moved to ensure a smooth transition.
These upgrades / new packages will only be published in the relevant sections of our website after all existing clients have been succesfully upgraded.
Exact Upgrade Details:
Email hosting:
Diskspace increase - from 10m to 20m per account
Bandwidth increase - from 250m to 500m
Basic hosting:
Diskspace increase - none
Bandwidth increase - from 1500m to 2000m
Bronze hosting:
Diskspace increase - from 50m to 100m
Bandwidth increase - from 1500m to 3000m
Silver hosting:
Diskspace increase - from 80m to 130m
Bandwidth increase - from 2500m to 5000m
Email accounts increased - from 20 to 30
Databases increased - from 1 to 2
Gold hosting:
Diskspace increase - from 150m to 200m
Bandwidth increase - from 3500m to 6500m
Email accounts increased - from 35 to unlimited
Platinum hosting:
Diskspace increase - from 250m to 450m
bandwidth increase - from 4500m to 8500m
EcomR (dynamic websites) hosting:
Diskspace increase - from 60m to 110m
Bandwidth increase - from 2000m to 4500m
EcomW hosting:
Discontinued. Given the overall upgrades, this package now becomes redundant. Clients using this package will simply be moved onto the standard Silver hosting package. There are no cost implications.
Self-Edit hosting:
Diskspace increase - from 50m to 110m
Bandwidth increase - from 1500 to 4500m
Search-E:
Discontinued. The internal search engine software for html websites will in future only be available as an add-on and will no longer be packaged in a seperate hosting plan.
If you are currently purchasing additional diskspace, bandwidth or email addresses, your account will be assessed and, if your add-ons now fall within the scope of the upgraded package, your monthly fee will automatically be adjusted accordingly as of 1 June (the next billing cycle).
Behind the Scenes
Just a quick update on what we're up to here.
Credit card payments: We had hoped to launch this at end March but have had some glitches in getting it working smoothly. It's now in final testing and planned for launch within the next few weeks.
Live chat Support: Please remember that we now have this facility and would love you to use it. It's an ongoing development and your feedback would be hugely appreciated.
New servers: We have just acquired 2 new servers, with quite a few more planned in the next few months. We will be using these primarily to spread accounts so that we have even less clients per server, which means even better overall performance than before.
Load shedding: As with everyone in the country, our offices are now affected by load-shedding as well. Our current schedule is Tuesdays 6am - 8am, Thursdays 4pm to 6pm and Saturdays 8am to 10am. This does NOT effect your websites or our services at all, but does effect our offices, which means that in these times we are not able to check email, respond to support tickets and are generally limited in our front-end support.
We are currently working at obtaining alternative power during the load-shedding periods, but ask that you please be patient in the interim.
That's it for today. We at Web Inn all wish you a peaceful and restful long weekend!
March 2008 News Updates
It's been a while since we have updated our news area, mainly because we have been so busy with both internal and client developments that we lost track of time. What has become evident in the last few months is that if 2007 was a year of major change and growth, 2008 is set to put it to shame.
What missed the news was that, in the latter half of 2007 we introduced our new payment reminder service to assist those clients who have overfull schedules and lose track of time. If you did not pick this up from our newsletter and are interested in this facility, please let us know.
At the same time we were also working furiously toward getting a live chat support system in place.
I am extremely pleased to say that we have now launched this live chat support (currently accessible from the front page of our site). This means that clients are now able to contact us via email, telephone, support ticket and live chat.
At this stage the chat support is still in the live testing phase. We are therefore disabling it periodically to work on it and improve its overall performance. Although we are going out of our way to avoid any downtimes during our normal office hours, it may on occassion not be avoidable and we ask you to bear with us. Having said that, we invite you to use this facility and, should you experience any problems at all, we would welcome and appreciate your feedback. - Criticism is the catalyst of perfection and it is only with real live users that we are able to test for every possible scenario.
To use this function, simply go to the front page (home page) of our site and click on the live support image toward the top center of the page. A window will open up and you will see a message as soon as a support member has picked up your call. You will see a window toward the bottom of the screen. Simply type your message in here and click on the "say" button next to it. At the end of the chat, you will be given the option to have a transcript emailed to you so that you have a record of the chat.
Our second bit of news for 2008 is that we have made a new hosting package available, specifically for those clients who really want nothing more than honest-to-goodness, down-to-earth website hosting, without the long list of extras that we have previously provided as standard inclusions.
This "no-frills" hosting package comes in at almost 30% cheaper than our previous base hosting package. Clients who are not using the email functionality on their domains, nor any of the extra features like database and pre-installed scripts, and who would like to downgrade, are welcome to do so from the next billing cycle and save themselves some cash. Please let us know before the 23rd of the month so that your account can be adjusted before invoices are generated. You can read more about this package here and see the overall comparison between packages here . Please note: this package does not include email accounts and there is no discount on this package for resellers/affiliates/multiple package holders.
Next in line is that we will be offering more and better options to those who prefer to pay via credit card. New clients signing up will in future find this to be a much smoother process and existing clients who wish to switch to credit card payments will also find it is even simpler than doing an EFT. This is set to launch at the end of March 2008 and all clients will be notified at that time.
Further news is that we have opened out first Agency Branch, catering to clients in the KZN North Coast region, from Ballito to Kosi Bay. This gives clients in that region someone on-the-ground that they can deal with, which allows for even better service and a closer working relationship on projects.
The KZN North Coast agent is Wendy Du Toit, who has worked closely with us in the past on a more informal basis and we are very pleased to have her now join us as a branch agent. A highly proficient business-woman and marketer, Wendy has a keen eye for design and a good understanding of what makes a website tick. If you are in the area and need a new website, a new look for an existing site or have a friend in the area that could benefit from Wendy's expertise and close proximity, her email address is wendy@web-inn.co.za.
Please note that support issues will still be dealt with by the Durban office, which is made even easier with the new online support function.
More agency branches in different locations are on the cards for this year and details will be published here, on our contact page and in our newsletters.
Next up - We suddenly realised last month that our 10 year anniversary had come and gone without us even realising it. What a shock! Given the very humble beginnings of Web Inn, we however decided that we'd take some license and make 1999 - the year in which it shifted from being a hobby-horse to a more focussed business - our official date of birth. It's a bit of a cheat, but this at least gives us another 8 months to come up with something meaningful and worthy of a 10th birthday celebration. - Watch this space!
The next bit of news relates only to existing clients. For the first time in over 5 years, many existing clients will be experiencing a price increase during 2008. Although our prices were raised in the last 2 years, existing clients were unaffected. We are now unfortunately forced to bring these clients on a parr with current pricing structures. - In most cases the difference is minimal and we have also simultaneously increased the actual package inclusions, so that the increase effectively constitutes an upgrade.
All clients who are not on a custom package, are not paying the base rates displayed on this site and who have not yet received communication from us in this regard, will be contacted in the near future. We will at the same time advise on different options that are available which, for some clients, may even result in an overall saving at the end of the day. If your rate is not subject to an increase, you will also be notified so that there can be no misunderstanding.
However you may be affected, prices that are currently shown on our site for standard hosting packages are subject to a guaranteed price freeze until the end of 2010.
Finally, we have amended our terms and conditions to accommodate certain aspects that we had not previously covered. We please urge all clients and potential clients to familiarise themselves with the current terms of service published on this website.
August Web News
It is hard to believe that the year is in its latter half already. We have barely had time to keep our clients up to date with changes!
Specials: Starting with the first of 3 August Madness specials, we are offering a saving in excess of R3000 on our dynamic websites and dynamic ecommerce websites. With such an enormous discount, we have had to limit this to 10 websites over a maximum of 4 days and made a point of informing all our existing clients to give them first option.
It regularly amazes us to see just how loyal our clients are and we do whatever we can to reward this loyalty.
What are the other two specials? You'll have to stop by and see for yourself or be sure to read our newsletters.
Service Upgrade: The next bit of news is that there has been a major upgrade to our client member area. The most important of these is that existing clients can now order add-ons via the automated function, which previously had a glitch and rejected existing domains. - Hopefully this makes your life a bit easier.
Hand in hand with this is that we can now fnally issue discount coupons to clients so that they can enjoy their special prices without the hassle of contacting us and depending on manual setup.
Demos: Good news for new and potential clients who do not know us. We are currently putting together demos of all our software and "Out the Box" website packages, like our different dynamic websites. This means that visitors to our site will soon be able to test drive these products and services before signing up, which should make the often daunting task of decision-making much less stressful.
Spam Control: As promised, we have provided some extensive tutorials on spam control. We had initially intended these to be articles, but then realised that a "how to" that related specifically to our servers would prove far more valuable to our clients as a starting point. Hence they became tutorials instead of articles. These are available to all our clients as downloads in the client member area.
2007 Starts With a Bang
Throughout the latter part of 2006 it was our aim to make 2007 the year of change and even greater overall improvements than our usual steady pace. With this in mind, we have just launched an exciting new software programme, designed with one thing in mind: providing a greater range of options to our clients and helping them to improve their online business.
The programme is:
Easy-Ed : a powerful, flexible and user-friendly site editor that allows selected content sections of any html page to be edited. This means that anyone can edit critical areas of even the most complex website, with no knowledge of coding and no fear of breaking the design.
Before now, content management was either too expensive or too complex for the average person, yet more and more people want to take control of their own websites, especially in industries where information needs to be regularly upgraded.
Our new software package addresses these issues. - Simple yet robust, site owners can now enjoy all the benefits of a content management system without having to have their site completely redeveloped.
A perfect, affordable solution for both webmasters and end users. full details
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