FAQ

The first thing to do is to contact us and let us know you’re interested in our service.

Once we know you’re interested, we will set up an appointment to go over your needs and preferences. Part of that conversation will include the cost to create and set up what you need.

We’ll send you an invoice to get started and then we’re off to the races!

Our goal is to have a functional design and to start importing content within 2 weeks. But, this depends on several factors.

Bottom Line: We want to get your site up and running as quickly as possible and will make every effort to do so.

ModFarm doesn’t just generate a theme file and some settings and throw it over the fence. We provide a complete ongoing service for you and your website.

This includes not only keeping your themes and plugins up to date, but also hosting, security, backups, and concierge support.

We don’t want your site to ever fall behind or fail to accurately inform your readers. Nor do we want your site to fail to do it’s job, which is to help you promote your books and your brand.

To allow us to do this, we have taken on a subscription model instead of a onetime payment for a onetime service.

Our intent is that your ModFarm website will be the last website you’ll ever need. If it needs updating or changing, we’ll just take care of it. Want to re-arrange something? Just ask.

Well, we honestly hope we can keep you so happy you never consider it, but we totally understand how situations can change over time.

If you do decide to cancel your service with us we will do a full export of all of your data and provide you with the data and theme files so you can set up your site elsewhere.

We will also provide you with a list of the plugins that were active on your site, but we will not be providing any premium plugin files.

We start by scheduling a consultation with you (usually by phone) to go over your needs and preferences. Then we take it from there.

Our goal is not to recreate your existing site, it is to make the site that best presents you, your books, and your brand. This is more than just how it looks – but also how it functions under the hood.

We design for all devices to make sure your site looks good no matter what your readers are using to access it.

We use WordPress exclusively. We’ve found it to be the best all around platform.

All of our sites use the Genesis Framework with customized StudioPress themes.

In our experience, this is the most durable, flexible, and stable theming combination we could find and it provides a rock solid base for your website.

We do not use Pagebuilders, only stock WordPress. If your site needs something beyond what the WordPress editor can provide, we will custom code it.

Despite our initial misgivings, we’ve found we really like using Gutenberg and, also a surprise to us, we’ve found our clients do as well.

That being said, if you are a longtime WordPress user and want to stay with the Classic Editor, that is no problem at all. We’ll activate the Classic Editor Plugin on your site and you’ll be good to go.

Absolutely!

Every page, page, book, series, and any other item on your site will be optimized for search engines, including custom descriptions and key words. This is part of the Design/Migration services.

Pages and Blog Posts have an SEO assistant built in so if you want to check readability and SEO for that page/post you can do it in real time direct from the editing panel.

Part of your marketing strategy is for content to be shared on the web. Be it a blog post, a book page, or just the site itself – sharing is a good thing.

When that content is shared, we want to make sure it looks good. That means a custom title, description, and formatted image.

As part of the Design/Migration process we will do all of this. And, as part of the subscription fee, we will maintain it and continue it for all new content.

Absolutely!

Selling signed copies and limited editions is a great way to provide something special to your readers and we’re all about it.

A full ecommerce suite, powered by WooCommerce, can be installed on your site no problem. We’ll guide you through the process of setting up your payment credentials and then we’ll make sure its all set up correctly.

Yup – sure can.

Many authors have found its better to use their own platform for memberships instead of third party systems like Patreon – more freedom and you get to keep all the money.

If you want to offer readers a membership service, we will work with you to install and set up a membership system on your website that meets your needs – its all part of the service.

Basically, it means we will help you with anything related to your website – and sometimes even outside of that.

For example, you are really busy right now (travelling, writing, deadline, etc) but you want to send out a newsletter to your readers informing them of the new audiobook release for your latest book. Send us a quick note telling us what you want and we’ll put it together for you and send a draft for your review. Once you approve, we’ll send it.

Or, you have a new release coming out – which is awesome! – and you want the pre-order up on your site. We’ll build that out for you and, when it publishes, we’ll make sure to change it from “Pre-order” to “Buy Now”. You don’t have to do a thing – we’ll take care of it for you.

Going to a convention and want your readers to know your schedule? Tell us which convention and we’ll pull the schedule details and post it to your website.

Want to split your newsletter signup into different lists and segments? Sure thing – just tell us what you want and we’ll figure it out and get it done.

See what I mean? We are here to support you so you can keep writing fantastic books to satisfy your fans.

All of them.

If you want us to actively help create and send newsletters for you, we prefer you use MailPoet, as that can be easily accessed and monitored from inside your website’s dashboard (as opposed to having to share login credentials with an external service, like MailChimp, MailerLite, etc).

We can provide both of these options and they are included in the Design fee and the ongoing maintenance subscription.

We will discuss how to best use these tools for your site and marketing needs and then we’ll implement it.

Want to change, add, or remove them down the road? No problem, that’s what the subscription is for. 😉

Oh, heck yeah.

The full suite – and we’ll monitor it for you and send you a notice if we see something interesting.

Yes, we have a premium hosting system that is super fast and we host all of our websites on it and that is included in the monthly subscription.

We don’t support websites on other hosts as we cant guarantee that performance, nor can we obtain the same level of security and support from other host companies as we can from our own.

Yes, we provide full HTTPS/SSL protection for all of our sites, so you can safely gather newsletter signups, provide membership services, and conduct e-commerce.

Rest assured, you and your readers will be fully protected on a ModFarm site.

We back up every site every night, and keep the last three nights in storage.

There will always be an available backup, just in case something terrible happens.

In addition to HTTPS/SSL, nightly backups, and file lockdown we do a daily scan of all sites to check for any security issues.

We also do daily database scans, with regular schedule database maintenance.

Yes, we do. You can click these links to view our Terms of Service, Acceptable Use Policy, and Privacy Policy.

Links are also available from any page at the bottom of our site.