Symbiotic Design™ FAQ (frequently asked questions)
 
 

How much?

For product pricing, please go to our products section.

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How can I profit from your web hosting services?

Aside from offering you a fully capable eCommerce plan to sell your products and/or services, there are other options available. Hosted member accounts can make a $15.00 referal fee for refering us new hosting clients. This is a sort of affiliate program and there are many such opportunites on the web. Details on our program will be sent with your welcome letter via email. We will also be offering design work referal fees in the near future, as well.

Other programs are also available from other parties which you can take advantage of to make some extra cash. You can setup banner ads which pay you money for each impression (everytime someone else's ad banner is shown). Or you can join affiliate programs and earn a cut of sales by endorsing third party products and programs. Both PayPal and iKobo have affiliate programs, and Amazon is a huge corporate giant that got where it is by it's affiliate support.

Generally, small businesses and professionals can benefit simply from the extra exposure they receive from a new and curious online audience. If you have something to sell, whether it be a product or a service, the real question is why wouldn't you have a website? Even if it is simply to deliver your contact information, it's like having a business card available for everyone. And if it's not available, you may well be dismissed by the online community.

You don't have to host with us in order to be successful. But we believe that your chances are better when you host with us. This is because of the three highspeed backbones we are directly connected to, two are global, AT&T and Global Crossing, while Qwest and AT&T cover almost every nook and cranny of the USA. This means you have the most direct lines for content delivery available. It also means that your pages are seen in places that other networks can't seem to deliver an information stream to.

However, remember that these are advanced servers. You may be just as happy at one of our budget web hosting solutions (DomainHostmaster.com, HDWebHosting.com or SiteHostPros.com) if you are just serving your own regional area. Our servers were meant for people who need to rely on a fast and reliable global presence and/or who require such a website for search engine optimization.

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What if my traffic demand exceeds my website's bandwidth?

Your account can be set to warn you, at your discretion if your bandwidth will exceed our generous bandwidth. You can upgrade your bandwidth easily as necessary, right from your website's Control Panel.

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Is Tech Support free?

Yes.

Web Hosting:
Tech Support is free for our web site hosting accounts for the contractor (the original contractor or the business which holds legal claim to it) for the life of the contract.

Symbiotic Design custom built computer systems:
Tech Support is free for the original purchaser on "Symbiotic Design Built" computer systems for the life of a "Symbiotic Design Built" computer system.

CD Media Products:
Deffective CD-ROMs are returnable for an exchange for the lifetime of the original purchaser.
CD-Rs are guaranteed 10 years against deffects to the original purchader and are returnable for exchange if they fail.

Toll-Free Number:
To assist you we offer prompt email support as well as toll-free telephone support for the USA and Canada... 1-800-279-2156.

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What kind of guarantee do I have?

Creative Services:
Our registered logo plans are also setup to guarantee that the approved final logo which we deliver to you will be patentable or we will create another until the logo passes the patent search.

Web Hosting Services:
Each new web hosting account gets a full 4 week (28 day) satisfaction guarantee or we will happily refund your web hosting fee.

CD Media Products:
Deffective CD-ROMs are returnable for an exchange for the lifetime of the original purchaser.
CD-Rs are guaranteed 10 years against deffects to the original purchader and are returnable for exchange if they fail.

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Where are the online tech support pages?

The website online tech support pages are located at http://www.SymbioticDesign.com/support/. Here you will find over 50 pages to assist your website design, development, management experience, as well as your typical online navigation.

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How do I access my Symbiotic Design hosted web site account Control Panel?

To access the Control Panel you must have a connection to the internet, then in a web browser enter your Domain Name web address and add the menu directory. I.E.: "http://www.mywebsite.com/menu" or "http://mywebsite.net/menu" (without the quotation marks). You will then have to enter the password which was sent to you when you signed up for a Symbiotic Design hosted web account. Upon recognition of a proper password, you will be presented with the Control Panel.

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Do you offer a webpage builder so that I can design my website myself online?

Yes, free with all Symbiotic Design accounts comes an online utility called Web Site Builder in the Control Panel. This program offers professionaly designed templates for setting up a 5 page (or less) commercial website quickly and easily. You can even preview your pages beforehand. We encourage all to try it out, it takes only minutes and we are sure you will be impressed with your results and proud of the accomplishment. There are some examples of the templates it offers on the Web Site Builder Sample Templates page. If you will need more than a 5 page website, you can use the utility again, but it will automatically want to write over the previous default page, index.html. You can avoid this several ways. I recomend that back up all of your webpages to your hard drive via an FTP utility before using Web Site Builder again, just incase it might overwrite an image file with another image of the same name.

1) When you build the second set of pages make sure that you use new unique filenames for the other supporting pages. When it previews your webpages it puts them in a directory on your website with your username. To access it you will have to go to your website address (Domain Name) with your username as the directory. I.E.: "www.yourwebsite.com/yourusername" (without quotation marks). You can then copy over the other 4 pages with an FTP or Telnet utility. 2) When you build the second set of pages make sure that you use new unique filenames for the other supporting pages. By renaming your main hompage (index.html) using an FTP or Telnet utility to another name (index_old.html, for example) before Web Site Builder publishes the 2nd version to the world in the final step. You can then have Web Site Builder create the pages and publish them to the world, delete the new default webpage (unless you like it better, or you made it to look the same) and rename the older default page back to index.html. 3) Simply FTP all of your old files to your hard drive and upload them back after Web Site Builder publishes.

Any way that you do this, though, you will still need to create links to your other webpages when you use Web Site Builder to create more than 5 pages for your website. Web Site Builder just didn't know about them. The new pages will have links back to your default homepage, though (because it's always named index.html). But you will want to FTP download all of the pages back to your computer and add links as appropriate so that you can access certain pages from others. When you are done adding links or other changes, you can FTP upload them back to your website.

If part of your problem is that you need an HTML editor, there are several great freeware versions. Try 1st Page 2000 (Win), BBEdit (Mac) or Alpha (Mac) (these previous links will open in a new browser window so that you can return easily after you download). If you are looking for a good WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) HTML editor you can probably find PageMill 3.0 easily if you ask around, try your freinds with computers. Adobe shipped it out free with new CD-R and CD-RW burners and there are lots of copies around. It even came with Photo Deluxe Business Edition for simple image processing and graphic manipulation. There is are both Windows and Mac versions, but I believe they only sent out the Windows copy on CD-ROM. This was a very simple but effective WYSIWYG webpage editor that many commercial sites started out on. It's big limitation was it's lack of support for new optimized graphics formats, but you may never run into that if you simply stick to .PSD or .PDD master images and GIF and JPEG images for publishing to the website. If you are looking to purchase a complete and professional web site creation and management tool, there is only one answer, Macromedia's Dreamweaver (the previous link will open in a new browser window so that you can return easily after you download). Macromedia has versions for both Windows and Macintosh, and even allow you to download a fully working time limited 30 day copy. That should give you enough time to realize that you can't go without it. Adobe's new product, GoLive, also available for Win and Mac, pales in comparison and is a nightmare to work with. Also remember that Microsoft's Frontpage is available and our servers do support all Frontpage extensions. Frontpage is an unusual program, though, loved by business people because of it's ease of use and hated by designers because it won't do what they want it to, which is precisely why I have never seen it. Maybe the 2002 version will be an improvement.

But when you get down to the brass tax, any simple text editor can be used to create and modify webpages. HTML is simply a formatting language which is completely text based and pretty easy to learn.

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Do you support subdomains?

Yes. We offer subdomains in the following two flavors:

Full featured subdomain accounts
Simply order another plan and request your subdomain. This account will have all of the great features of any normal domain account on the same plan, without any Domain Name registration hassles or fees.

Free subdomains
You are permitted up to 5 free subdomains on any plan. Just make a directory within your web site with the name you want your subdomain to be and send us an email telling us what your new subdomain name will be and request us to set it up for you. As an example, the "Columbian Gourmet Coffee Beanery" owns the Domain Name "gourmet-coffee-beans.com" and wants three subdomains, "columbian.gourmet-coffee-beans.com", "featured.gourmet-coffee-beans.com" and "other.gourmet-coffee-beans.com". So they create 3 directories in thier web directory "columbian", "featured" and "other". Then they simply send us an email requesting these subdomains be setup on thier account and we do the rest. After setting up these subdomains we will send a confirmation email and the new subdomains should be accessible within 12 to 24 hours.

Remember that free subdomains share the bandwidth and storage space allotment of the primary domain. Full featured subdomains come with thier own plan which allows them thier own bandwidth and storage allotment according to the plan chosen.

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What is your server configuration?

The most current updated server configuration chart is given below. Note that we support most standard Apache/Linux/Perl modules, as well.

What programming languages do your servers support?

We support almost all popular modern programming languages available for Linux servers. You may also add your own support for specialized programs such as shopping carts.

We support:

• cgi (comon gateway interface through your own cgi-bin directory)
• SSI (server side includes)
• Perl
• PHP
• ASP optional (ChilliSoft's (now Sun's) Active Server Pages)
• JSP optional (Sun's Java Server Pages)
• Java servlets (simply turn this support on in your Control Panel, it's not taking up storage space if you don't require it)
• ColdFusion optional (Macromedia's serverside web application programming language)
• Javascript (Javascript is actually a client supported language that will require the visitor's browser to support it)
• Shockwave (Shockwave is actually a client supported language that will require the visitor's browser to support it with an installed plug-in)
• Flash (Flash is actually a client supported language that will require the visitor's browser to support it with an installed plug-in)
• C++
• Visual Basic
• MySQL (Database)
• JDB is also available (Java Database)
• and others

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What programming language services do you offer?

Do you offer Visual Basic programming?

Not really. Microsoft stopped supporting it, therefore we are concentrating on modern high level languages.

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What if I can't get online?

Symbiotic Design can build or set up any computer, any OS. We can get anyone online or host anyone. We can teach anyone how to use any modern computer made.

We can also offer you managed hosting. Managed hosting allows us to host you to the worldwide public as well as manage and maintain your web site for you, saving you the headache of maintaining your website. We do need you to have some sort of email facility, though. Even an email enabled cell phone would suffice. Be sure to check with us for our rates before enabling this premium service.

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I am in another city and want to use Symbiotic Design services.

Symbiotic Design can deliver bids in person with travel expenses paid by the client. Websites are priced as Magazines. A one issue magazine per month is $5,000.00. A complete logo brand identity can be from $1,000.00 to $5,000 depending on package required. Identity packages delay working on the magazine by one month. Symbiotic Design includes no lawyers fees, it is your responsibility to take care of Trademarking.

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I don't want to be a client, I have nothing for you to design, what else do you have?

You can become a consumer. Check for T-shirts, hats, movies, DVDs, CD-ROMs, games, computer systems, gadgets. Or ask about our modeling opportunities. *Smile*

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What are your business hours?

9am-8pm Mon-Thurs, 8am-4pm Fri-Sat, 12noon-4pm Sun. All Times are Central Time.
Hosting Service Technical Support Emergencies are usually Handled Around the Clock.

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What is your business plan?

Total Domination. Just kidding, we are not Microsoft...

The Symbiotic Design™ Business Plan:

Vision:
To open the world up to visual communication aesthetic and design as a major player in all aspects of visual communication and technologies while having fun doing it and enjoying all the arts and the world in the process.

Values:
Honesty, respect, confidence, kindness, care, love, family, creativity, passion, culture, morality, logic, common sense, teamwork, drive, efficiency, effectiveness, humor and fun.

Mission:
To save the world from overpriced, inefficient interface design and guerilla marketing tactics by example.
To reintroduce the public to beauty in art, graphic design, animation, video, marketing and advertising.
To provide our customers and clientele with innovative products and services at competitive prices.
To support our products and services with freindly, encouraging and helpful technical support.
To educate ourselves and others along the way, for we never want to stop learning.
To enjoy the adventure of success.

Symbiotic Design™ moto:
"Art changes the world."

Company abstract:
Symbiotic Design™ is a professional new media design and development studio. We are complete corporate and professional identity architects, offering global public image, professional profile and corporate presence promotion solutions. We are a creative visual arts company specializing in custom online multimedia content and delivery through a wide range of talents.

Company services:
We offer a wide range of services, both creative and technical. Partial lists are provided below with short descriptions...

Our creative studio services include:

• Complete unique identity solutions for corporate application or professional individuals. These are full identity packages featuring guaranteed patentable logos with 10 year dispute protection.
• Simple, effective and inexpensive web logo services (no patent or dispute protection).
• Creative graphic design services for all media (print, software, web, video, etc.).
• Illustration services for any illustrated media requirements.
• Typography. Digital type setting for all media.
• Animation development, delivery and publishing.
• Compelling web site design solutions.
• Interactive software development and publishing (CD-ROM, software, web).
• Multimedia design, development, production, publishing and marketing.
• Accurate photographic restoration.
• Commercial broadcast quality video production.
• Catalog and print layout and graphic design.
• Free graphic images for personal use.
• Public Domain images for free use.

Our tech lab services include:

• Professional web hosting.
• Managed web hosting.
• Technical support.
• Marketing and promotion (all media).
• Web promotion.
• Web site search engine optimization.
• Consulting.
• Training.
• Complete state-of-the-art professional gaming server systems.

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Give us a call.... (605) 331-0808 or 1-800-2792156. We would be more than happy to answer your questions.

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