Frequently Asked Questions
Every website you visit on the Internet is located on a server. A hosting provider (or “hosting” for short) is a service provider that allocates space on their web server for your website files to be stored on.
To put it in a nutshell, buying a hosting means to rent out space to house a website on the World Wide Web. Your files – HTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript, images and others – must be hosted on a web server to be viewable online.
There are a lot of different hosting providers out there. We don’t mind which one you’ve chosen to work with, however there are a few things that make our work easier and your project – faster:
– a cPanel: this is a Control panel and it provides a graphic interface and automation tools to simplify the process of hosting a website. A lot of hosting providers have a cPanel available, but if not, it may take more time for us to set up your hosting and WordPress, thus it may result in extra charges. If you haven’t already chosen a hosting provider, we advise you to check with them on this matter.
– a FileManager: the FileManager is where all of your website’s files are stored and we can access them there. If your hosting provider doesn’t have a FileManager, it may take more time for us to set up your hosting and WordPress, thus it may result in extra charges. If you haven’t already chosen a hosting provider, we advise you to check with them on this matter.
One of our top recommendations is buying your hosting from Superhosting.bg**. You can read more about them in our article Services That Offer Promotions and Freebies, as well as on their website.
** If you still don’t have a hosting – we recommend that you purchase a medium hosting package (SuperPro) from Superhosting.bg. They have great tools for WordPress and an easy-to-use cPanel, FileManager, etc.. If you are a new client – in step 4 with the promo code “webdesh” you get a 10% discount on the entire order.
A domain name (or domain for short) is your website’s equivalent of a physical address.
For example, webdesh.com is a domain, where webdesh is the website’s name and .com is the domain name extension.
One of our top recommendations is buying your domain from Superhosting.bg**. You can read more about them in our article Services That Offer Promotions and Freebies, as well as on their website.
** If you still don’t have a domain – we recommend that you purchase it from Superhosting.bg. If you are a new client – in step 4 with the promo code “webdesh” you get a 10% discount on the entire order.
DNS is short for Domain Name System. We access information online through domain names. Web browsers interact through Internet Protocol (or IP) addresses. Essentially, what DNS does is it converts your domain name (such as webdesh.com) into a computer-friendly numerical IP address (such as 192.168.1.1).
When purchasing a hosting and domain, we basically have to tell this domain to load the information from a specific web hosting server, where your website is housed. For example, if you buy your hosting from Superhosting.bg and your domain name from GoDaddy.com, until you change your domain’s DNS servers, it will be hosted on a GoDaddy server. Changing those DNS servers allows your domain to load information from Superhosting.bg
Each web hosting server has its own DNS servers, which we have to put for your domain. This operation is usually done either by your hosting provider or us, but in case you can’t/don’t want to grant us access to your domain, here is what needs to be done:
1) Get your DNS servers from your hosting provider.
2) Edit your domain’s DNS servers and put the servers that your hosting provider gave you.
When edited, it takes 2 to 48 hours to refresh and load from the correct server.
WordPress is a Content Management System (CMS) that we build the websites with. It’s an open-source and free software, which means that you can download and use it for free and in any way you like.
We chose to use WordPress, because working with it provides a big flexibility: – it allows us to have a lower website creation fee, as we usually work with ready themes and builders, instead of code** – it allows us to create your website faster – it’s easy to deliver and it’s easy for you to support your website afterwards.
Overall, WordPress comes with a lot of advantages and a lot of already made functionalities that we can easily add to your website by installing different plugins.
Here are some numbers to consider about why to choose WordPress (except being fast to create and flexible):
- Over 60 million websites are based on WordPress globally;
- 409 million monthly readers of WordPress blogs;
- 64,6% of the global content management market;
- Over 33% of the top 10M websites globally use WordPress.
If you have any questions or are not sure WordPress is the right tool for you, please contact us and we can consult you and figure it out together.
** We normally work with pre-made themes and builders, but if your project requires it, we are open to develop a custom theme or extra custom plugins specifically for your needs. If you are interested in us creating your new website, please fill out our request form and we can take it from there.
In WordPress, a plugin is a bit of code that “plugs” into your website. WordPress plugins are used to either add a new functionality to your website or extend an already existing one.
We always try to only use plugins that are an absolute must. Here you can see a list of plugins we install for every website, regardless of the theme and functionalities:
– RankMath or YoastSEO: these are the 2 plugins we usually use for SEO purposes. We will only use one of them on your website. Please read more about what SEO is in the SEO and Marketing section;
– Cookie Notice: we need to use a cookie notice plugin, but it is up to you what plugin to use here, since some are easier to set up and others are more GDPR compliant. For easy to use options we sometimes use this one – Cookie Notice & Compliance for GDPR / CCPA;
– UpdraftPlus: this is a plugin, which allows you to backup your website. We usually use it before we perform any updates. If you want to learn more about backups, please read our article – How to Backup Your Website.
– Cloudflare: Cloudflare is a caching system that we usually set up for every website we’re working on. The plugin is used for easier access, for example if you want to enable the dev mode, purge or clear the cache and more. If you want to learn more about Cloudflare, please read our article – Why is My Website Slow?.
– WP Fastest Cache (free) or WP Rocket (paid): these are the 2 plugins we usually use regarding the speed optimization of your website. We will only use one of them on your website. If you want to learn more, please check out the Website Speed section.
– Imagify or Smush: these are the 2 plugins we usually use when it comes to images optimization inside of the website. We will only use one of them on your website. If you want to learn more about images optimization before you upload them to your website, please check out our article – Optimizing Images for Web.
While working on your website, it will be put in Coming soon mode or Maintenance mode. We also disable indexing for your website, until it’s public. Read the following questions to understand more:
- What is a coming soon page or maintenance mode page?
- How do you stop browsers from indexing our website?
There is a nifty setting straight in the WordPress admin. Here’s where it is and how you enable the deindexing: WP admin -> Settings -> Reading -> check “Discourage search engines from indexing this site”**
** There is a disclaimer below the checkbox that reads: “It is up to search engines to honor this request.”. It usually works and all pages are set as noindex. If, however, this doesn’t work, we have the Coming soon or Maintenance mode protecting the website, so in all cases no one will be able to access the website before it’s ready.
HTTPS stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure. HTTP is the protocol through which data is passed between a web browser (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, etc.) and a website. The “S” in HTTPS stands for Secure. This means that whenever you are browsing an HTTPS website, your connection is secure and less susceptible to malicious intentions. Please read our article on HTTPS to learn more – HTTPS and Why It’s So Important.
This depends mostly on your hosting provider and what options they have. The basics usually are:
- Installing an SSL certificate, so that your website loads securely with HTTPS. If you are unfamiliar with what HTTPS is, please check our article: HTTPS and Why It’s So Important;
- Creating a secure admin access;
- Making your WordPress version private;
- Disabling file editing through the admin panel;
If you currently have a website on your domain and you want to use the same one for your new website, there are 2 ways we can handle this:
1) We delete your old website or transfer it to a subdomain – old.yourwebsite.com if you still want to save it. Then, we install WordPress on the domain and create the new website. We use this when you don’t mind not having a website for the period of time that we’re working on the new website. We put up a Coming soon and Maintenance mode page and if someone tries to access your domain, they will be greeted with it.
2) We keep your old website live and users can continue using it as usual. We create a staging subdomain – staging.yourwebsite.com and create the new website on the staging subdomain. Your old website won’t be affected in any way. When we’re done – we either delete the old website and transfer the staging website to your domain, or transfer the old website to old.yourwebsite.com and then transfer the staging website to your domain.
** Please have in mind that having to transfer your website from one domain to another might affect our offer.
When it comes to design, our team is open to work any way you want:
1) We work with a pre-made design, provided by you and we implement it to a WordPress theme. (pricier)
2) We piece together different sections from different theme templates, just like a puzzle. (standard)
Usually, this is the most popular option with our clients, as it gives more flexibility and it costs less. We take a WordPress theme from which you can choose a few templates and we build the website as a puzzle (based on your content, your needs and the design you like).
To get some idea of what we mean by templates, we want to share with you two of the themes we use the most: Jupiter X and Astra. You can see their templates here: Jupiter X Templates, Astra Templates.
3) We work 100% by template, only changing content, colors, logos, etc. to make it more branded and suited for you. (cheapest)
If you like a ready template and need no customization (meaning, no structural change of general sections and design elements, except deleting any you don’t like), the price is between 10% and 30% lower, based on your project. Have in mind that we always customize the fonts and colors, and we fill in your images and text on the website!
4) If you’re unsure of what you like – we create mood boards, give you suggestions and all in all work side by side with you to achieve the best results. (pricier)
If you want to hear more about it and get a free consultation from us – make a request here.
A WordPress theme is a tool, which helps you change your website’s layout and styling. Different themes come with different plugins, which provide different functionalities you may want your website to have.
As an example, please read our review on Jupiter X – Why Jupiter X is Our Preferred WordPress Theme.
You choose the theme mostly based on the functionalities you need for your website. A couple of examples:
– If you need an online shop, make sure to pick a theme that is WooCommerce compatible;
– If you need a multilingual website, make sure to pick a theme that is WPML or Polylang compatible;
In general, make sure that the theme you pick is:
- tested and compatible with the latest WordPress version;
- well documented;
- compatible and working with your desired builder.
We will be supporting you throughout this whole process and suggesting different options, based on your wishes, so don’t worry about it too much 🙂
A lot of our clients often confuse a theme and a theme demo/template. The easiest way to explain the difference is that the theme is the bigger thing and it comes with multiple theme demos. A theme demo is a pre-made website that you can install and use as it is, only changing texts, images, colors, etc., to make it suitable for your brand.
How we usually work is we take different sections from different demos and combine them like a puzzle to build your website. If you would like to read more on how we work design-wise, please read the “How do we pick a design?” Questions above.
Yes, your website is going to look good on all kinds of devices and resolutions. We create fully responsive websites and we only work with themes that are optimized for responsive designs.
There are a few rules to follow when picking out the perfect font for your website:
– It should correspond nicely to your logo, if your logo has text in it. Preferably and if possible, use the same font as the one in your logo.
– It should be an easy to read font. It’s best to use sans-serif fonts for longer texts. Following recent design tendencies, cursive fonts are becoming less and less modern and recommended to use, even for small portions of text, such as headlines. But if it works well with your logo and you really like the look – we can make it work for some small headings and texts.
– If you are planning on using different languages and scripts, such as Cyrillic, for example, make sure the font you pick is available for all scripts you need.
We will fully support, advise and guide you on picking the perfect font for your website as well.
There are a few ways to pick the perfect colors for your website:
1) If you have a brand book, the designers who create it give you a color scheme for your business, based on different design rules and the psychology of colors. If we are working with a brand book, we incorporate those colors.
2) If you don’t have a branding book, but you have a colorful logo – we either take the colors from your logo and use them as appropriate, or use different variations of those colors as suitable.
3) If your logo is black and white – we either create a monochromatic look with blacks, whites and grays; or pick accent colors you like and overall work well for your business. After all, black and white goes with everything 😉
We will work with you and advise you on picking the perfect colors that are going to work best for your website and business.
If you’re interested in reading more about colors and their meaning, please read our article – Psychology of colors.
An answer from the gdpr.eu website: “The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is the toughest privacy and security law in the world. Though it was drafted and passed by the European Union (EU), it imposes obligations onto organizations anywhere, so long as they target or collect data related to people in the EU. The regulation was put into effect on May 25, 2018. The GDPR will levy harsh fines against those who violate its privacy and security standards, with penalties reaching into the tens of millions of euros.”. You can learn more here.
There are 4 basic things that must be done for a GDPR-compliant website:
- you must have a cookie notice popup/banner to inform your viewers that the website collects cookies;
- you must have the necessary legal documents, such as a Cookie Policy and a Privacy Policy;
- if you collect any personal information (including names, email addresses, phone numbers and more) through a contact form, under each form you must add an acceptance checkbox with a link to the page/document, in which you explain how you collect, store and process this information;
- your website must load through HTTPS and a secure connection.
In order for the site to be published, we will need legal documents from you, which in informative websites are Privacy Policy & Cookie Policy; in an online store there are more – you can prepare them with a lawyer or buy them here – Web protection package from advokatami.bg (we believe they only prepare them in Bulgarian). For English, you may use this website: termsfeed.com. In any case we can not guarantee for how GDPR compliant they are or their quality, so we always advise our clients to consult with a lawyer on these topics.
0. Mandatory and functional cookies: here and here.
1. WordPress uses the following cookies here.
2. Google Analytics also uses cookies, you can learn more here.
3. Cookie notice plugin (only if you’re using this specific one on your website) – “cookie_notice_accepted, stored for 1 month” – this cookie is important to include in your Cookie policy, as part of the cookies you use, because it is taken from the plugin, which gives us the popup that people see when they enter your website and they agree with your policies (Privacy Policy and Cookies). (FYI Used by Cookie Notice plugin whose function is “to elegantly inform users that your site uses cookies and to comply with the EU cookie law GDPR regulations.” (According to the plugin info itself))
4. Facebook Pixel (if you use it): here, here, here and here.
5. For online shops only: WooCommerce Cookies here.
In the future you can check your website here.
There are a lot of factors that affect your website’s speed, such as: image sizes, how many plugins you use and even your hosting server. If you would like to learn more about how to increase the website speed, please read our articles:
For every website, the speed optimizations we perform are:
- optimizing all images to be the correct sizes;
- connecting your website to Cloudflare;
- making sure we’re only using the plugins we absolutely need;
- decluttering your website from all unnecessary images, plugins, themes and other files that take up hosting space and might slow down your website;
- using a caching plugin, such as WP Fastest Cache (free) or WP Rocket (paid).
If you want to learn more about optimizing the images for your website, please check out our article – Optimizing Images for Web.
Apart from following those steps, we also install and setup an images optimization plugin on your website. No CTAs for you here – we will install and set it up for you. If you want to learn more, please check out the “Which plugins do we use for every website and what is their purpose?” questions.
If you want to invest more into making your website faster, we recommend the following 2 plugins to be added:
- WP Rocket** – please read more about it in our article – Top Paid Plugins We Use and Why | Part 1.
- Asset CleanUp: Page Speed Booster*** – compatible with WP Rocket and we advise you to combine the two for best results. What it does is, it “stripts the fat” off of your website. Quick example from its developers: “For instance, you might use a plugin that generates contact forms and it loads its assets (.CSS and .JS files) in every page of your website instead of doing it only in the /contact page (if that’s the only place where you need it).”.
As we explained in our Why is my website slow? article, having a fast-loading website is not a simple task and it is dependable on a lot of things. Having said this, please have in mind that sometimes problems may come from your hosting server, which we can do little to nothing about. Another key factor is how you continue to support your website – do you optimize your images correctly; do you keep it free from unnecessary plugins and files, etc.. In the end, it all adds up and leads to a pretty slow website.
** It is a paid plugin, which costs $49/year per website. We have a subscription for unlimited websites, so drop us a line if you’re interested in using it on your website and we can set it up for you at a reasonable price.
*** Asset CleanUp has a free version, which is usually enough for our purposes. However, the setup takes quite some time, so if you want us to set it up for you – please let us know and we’ll give you a reasonable price.
We use a plugin, called WooCommerce, which enables us to have an online shop on a WordPress website. To learn more about WooCommerce, please read the next questions.
WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin that allows us to build an online shop, based on WooCommerce. What it gives you is:
- all necessary e-commerce pages, such as: Shop, Cart, Checkout, Account, category pages, single product pages;
- the ability for people to make purchases and payments on your website. To learn more about payments in WooCommerce, please read the next questions;
- the ability to set different delivery zones and delivery options. To Learn more about deliveries and delivery zones in WooCommerce, please read the next questions.
You can read more about WooCommerce on their website.
Depends on what your preferences are. All delivery options and payments options, for example, require different information to be set. In general, these are the things we need:
- information about you and your business – email address, your business’s physical address
- which countries you sell to;
- your currency;
- what delivery options you wish your website to have (including if you offer a free delivery);
- what payments methods you wish your website to have;
- do you wish to have promo codes.
You can set different delivery zones. For example, you may sell your product in Bulgaria, but deliveries are only available for Sofia. Each delivery zone can have its own shipping You can add different shipping methods, the 3 default ones are:
- flat rate;
- free shipping;
- no delivery.
Any other integrations with delivery services (such as Econt or Speedy in Bulgaria) we can add as an extra service. If you want such integration, please let us know and we will discuss it.
You may sell your product in Bulgaria, but only want to deliver to specific regions in Bulgaria, for example Sofia. Those regions are added as delivery zones. You may have as many delivery zones as you’d like and the main difference is what shipping options are available.
A quick example to make you understand it better: let’s say you sell your products in Bulgaria, but you only deliver in Sofia, Plovdiv, Varna and Burgas. Your delivery price for Sofia is 5 leva and for the rest – it’s 8 leva. In this case, we add 2 different delivery zones, respectively: Sofia (with flat rate shipping 5 leva) and Plovdiv, Varna, Burgas (with flat rate shipping 8 leva). If a customer enters their address as Sofia, their delivery will be calculated as 5 leva. If they choose Plovdiv, their delivery will be calculated as 8 leva. If they choose Sliven, no delivery options will be available.
For each different delivery zone, we can set different free shipping as well. For example, your free shipping for Sofia may be activated if a customer spends 50 leva and for Plovdiv, Varna and Burgas – if they spend 80 leva.
In our offer, we have included one delivery zone with flat rate shipping and free delivery shipping methods available. If you wish to add more delivery zones, please let us know and we will include it as an extra service.
There are a lot of different possibilities when it comes to payments methods. The standard and default ones are:
- Bank Transfer (not to be confused with card payment – they are different!);
- Cash on Delivery (CoD);
- Payment by Check;
- Standard PayPal payment.
In our offer, we have included to set up the Bank transfer and CoD payment method. However, we can add many more payment methods – Stripe, card payments and more. Please let us know what payment method you wish to implement and we will estimate how much the integration is going to cost.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Basically, it’s a way for your website to rank higher in a Google search, for example. If you want to learn more about what we do in terms of SEO, please read the next questions.
For every website we create, we include basic SEO optimization, meaning: we connect the website to Google Search Console (so that Google can find your website more easily) and we place descriptions, titles and set up good-looking URLs on your pages for every page/post/product we create (using a plugin, normally YoastSEO or RankMath). We do this for free for every website since when you share it or people look for it on Google – it looks more representative for both you and us. This is why we won’t even ask you if you want the basic SEO 🙂
Many people ask us about appearing on the first page of Google. There are too many resources and information to share here, thus I will forward you to this link here. A very simple video that explains SEO and we can only help with 1/10th of it as the rest is marketing strategy. From this video we take care of the links, descriptions, titles and the rest is – how often and how much you invest in your website on a daily basis.
For further SEO optimization, we would recommend either contacting a professional SEO guru, or investing in content for your website and GoogleAds since the result might be much better for the money.
We need to connect a form on your website to a CRM. This is called an integration. For those purposes, we mostly use and recommend integrating MailChimp. If you are unfamiliar with what MailChimp is, please read the next question for a general overview.
If you have chosen a different CRM, please let us know, so we can research if an integration is possible and provide you with more details.
MailChimp is an all-in-one integrated marketing platform for small businesses. You can collect people’s email addresses (and other information such as names or phone numbers) and store them in a MailChimp audience list. This process is automated, meaning that whoever submits your subscribe form will be automatically added into your MailChimp audience. Then, you can send newsletters, informational and promotional materials to anyone who has been added to your list.
But is MailChimp free? Yes and no.
- In the free version, you have the right to create 1 audience list per account. If you want to have 2 or more audience lists in the same account, you have to subscribe to a paid plan.
- In the free version, you are able to have up to 2,000 contacts. If you exceed this number, you will have to subscribe to a paid plan.
- In the free version, you are able to send newsletters, but have limited options when it comes to designing your newsletter campaigns. If you want to have more options – you will have to subscribe to a paid plan.
Here you can see a detailed comparison between MailChimp’s free vs. paid services: MailChimp Pricing and Plans.
Regarding the integration, this is what we need from you and different ways we may work:
1) You already have an account, but prefer not to give us access to it: in this case, what we need in order to set it up on your website, are your MailChimp API Key & Audience ID.
2) You already have an account and decide to give us access to it: great, no CTAs for you here. Just send us the credentials and we take it from there.
3) You don’t have a MailChimp account: you can either set it up yourself and then continue with 1) or 2), or we can set it up for you as an extra service. If you require our help, please let us know, so we can include it in our offer.
We mainly create 3 types of websites – informative WordPress websites, online shops, portfolios and blogs. Let’s see what this means:
- Informative websites
These websites provide all needed information for your service/product and have a simple functionality, such as a standard contact form for example.
A few examples of such websites that we have created are: 11.vc, a-dose-of-happiness.com, mesko.bg, vita-bg.eu, freshdirect.bg, kiprite.com, startitsmart.com, baseprogram.bg, ablebulgaria.org, icover-services.com, winsandwich.com.
You see, they can be bigger or smaller websites, designs vary, as well as their complexity and customization. Some of them have a little bit of extra – a download button or a bigger/more complicated contact form. Your website can be informative and also have a blog page, a service/portfolio page or a video. If you need one – you will get one.
- Portfolios / Blogs
These are in general small websites that include a home page full of posts (blog or portfolio) to showcase what you want to share with the world.
The main purpose of this type of website is to showcase a big number of posts that you want to share with the world. Usually, it consists of a Posts page (Blog/Portfolio/Work/…), maybe “Home” page, maybe “About” page and contacts in the footer. Some examples are mila.land, tec.bg, noblink.bg, justanotherwonderer.com.
Websites that are focused on a portfolio/blog could be:
– This could be movies you created (ex: noblink.bg; a-dose-of-happiness.com)
– or clothing you want to show as a catalogue (ex: knapp.bg)
– or you are an actor and want to show projects that you were part of (ex: denitzazafirova.com)
– or you organize events and want to show the ones you have already organized (ex: tec.bg)
– or you have a podcast and you want to list all your episodes (ex: febcommunity.com)
– or you are an interior designer and you want to show the homes you renovated (ex: mila.land).
Most of the time you either have 1-3 pages (Home, Contact, About) and the rest of the content on the website is posts showing your work/skills/interests.
- Online shops
Being able to buy things from the website and sometimes – pay directly on it.
Some online shops we have created: goayo.com, derma-act.bg, tastethatbox.bg, basecamp.tours.
Normally, we suggest we create all your standard informative pages, all shop-related pages (cart, checkout, profile, etc.) and also 1 product template. After we are ready with the website we will give you a video tutorial on how to add more products to your shop based on the used template – this will make your website more budget-friendly. Of course, if you want we can add all your products for you, as well.
We have a variety of extra services that we are ready to provide to you:
- Extra languages: any extra language adds between 20% and 35% increase to the price of your website.
- Any other integration you may want/need: this could be specific plugins that you need for your online shop (Booking, custom design of T-shirts, etc.) or maybe an integration with Zoom, Google Calendars, Facebook, Instagram and more. There will be an additional charge that depends on the services and time estimation for the integration.
- WordPress Training: a 4-hour live session, during which we show you all you need to know, in order to support your WordPress website on your own. Followed by a 1-hour Q&A session, during which we are open to any questions you may have regarding WordPress. Please check our page for more information – WordPress Training.
- Website Support: We always tell our clients that the work on a website doesn’t stop with building it, it just begins. All the software used on a website gets updated every 1-2-3 months. So please, pretty please, keep your websites alive by updating them and logging in at least once a week. See more about our service here: Support.
* People with subscriptions are a priority for us. If you don’t take care of your website at least once a year you will have issues that require more time to fix, thus – it becomes pricier for you at the end.
- Graphic design: creating custom images, animations and brand materials for you. Since they are custom, we will need to discuss them after the website creation offer and meeting. Here is a list of graphic design services we provide:
– Full branding
– Logo only
– Business cards
– Brochures
– Company presentation
– Custom icons for website
– Social media branded images
And if you need anything else graphic design-related, let us know and we will discuss it.
For more information, please also check out our Help page. If you have any more questions, don’t hesitate to email us at [email protected].
For more information, please also check out our Help page. If you have any more questions, don’t hesitate to email us at [email protected].