Frequently Asked Questions
- Are RSS feeds (news syndication feeds) good or bad for newspaper websites?
- Can my newspaper website be viewed on a cell phone?
- How does the copyright policy work?
- How long does it take to put together such a website?
- I have a small community newspaper without an IT or web staff. My regular staff is new to the web. How do I know that they have the technical ability to update the website?
- What are your monthly fees?
- What file formats can you accept?
- What is search engine optimization?
- What is your payment policy?
This is a matter of opinion, but we believe they can benefit your site both in readership numbers and advertising revenue. See item: RSS: good or bad for newspapers? for more about this issue.
Yes and no. Any website can be viewed on an iPhone. But if you are referring to a regular, web-enabled cell phone, some modifications need to be done to your site to make it readable. Please see PDAs, cell phones and iPhones for more information about this; and check out our web packages for pricing and implementation information.
Each site we create for newspapers (or other media), is created using content provided from each individual news source. Any design, programming and graphics created by Maine Web FX is copyrighted by Maine Web FX until the final payment on the site is made, at which time the copyright switches over to the newspaper.
Copyright for content is the sole ownership of the newspaper and its affiliates and is bound by outside sources terms of service, such as (but not limited to), Associated Press articles.
The copyright for design and programming does not extend to any part of the site that uses open source code, which is governed by its own General Licensing Policy.
The time frame for the website is really dependent on your needs. To be thorough, we would like to have a solid four weeks to get a full evaluation of your newspaper complete and enough time to properly program and design it.
However, if you come prepared with your needs and wants, a week could be shaved off the timeframe: 3 weeks.
The rule of thumb that you should generally go by is this. (Which was actually taken from another Website, but summed up everything really well): If you have the technical know-how to construct an email with an attachment, create a formatted document with Microsoft Word, and navigate through a web site, you have the skills needed for content management. It really is that easy, provided you have the right content management software.
We don't have any monthly (or weekly or any other) fees. Unless you need Maine Web FX to make changes to your site, you WILL NOT be billed.
The only recurring fee that you will have when Maine Web FX develops your website is an annual hosting fee of $200 per year. This is not technically a recurring fee, because we will ask you if you want to renew each year and not do anything until we hear from you.
The better question is what file formats do we NOT accept. Because we run Macs for all our programming and design, we CANNOT accept Microsoft Publisher files. They just do not work on Macs.
A partial list of what we can accept: jpeg, gif, png, MS Word, Excel, Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Corel Draw, Corel Painter, txt.
Search engine optimization is the process of implementing several key factors into your website to increase your search rankings in the major search engines such as Google and Yahoo.
No one thing is search engine optimization, and no magic bullet exists to get the top spot. However, Maine Web FX uses state of the art monitoring tools and procedures to help you achieve very high rankings. Our techniques have resulted in top 10 placement for each newspaper website we have designed and developed thus far.
33% due before work on site is started (non-refundable)
33% due before site is live launched
33% due 30 days from live launch
