About

StoryTappy is a side venture by Jacqui, who hosts her own web projects through WordPress. Not everyone has the time or know-how to manage domains, DNS, CDN, premium plugin licenses, caching, security and server resources. Since Jacqui is already managing these for her own sites, she has extended that service to friends and family, and from there, to trusted acquaintances. 

The aim of StoryTappy is not endless clientele but low-key, reliable ones who don’t run complex sites (e.g. for e-commerce, memberships or reservations). They are the ones who needn’t pay higher fees for the likes of Shopify, Squarespace and WooCommerce – and who can benefit from having a real, human-to-human relationship with a ‘web person’ when needed. Think of it as a friendly local partnership – lower costs and anxiety for you, creative collaboration and pocket money for Jacqui.

For a small initial fee, Jacqui will create the shell of your website (pages, menu structure etc). You can then choose to design your site from scratch, using some of the best DIY design tools on offer (see here) or get up and running fast via a template.

Alternatively, Jacqui can negotiate a design fee for the whole site. Depending on the scope of the project, this may be $200 or it could be $700. Either way, that’s far less than a regular web agency, which normally charges well over $1k.

If too busy, Jacqui may be able to put you in touch with someone who also designs WordPress sites (to be hosted by StoryTappy). 

StoryTappy is best suited to:

• those who want unique design tools – such as the ability to add animations, horizontal scroll, content-toggle, and magic scroll (amongst other things). We also offer about 900 templates to choose from, and can assist with pre-made animations. Benefit from our economies-of-scale when it comes to premium licenses.
• those who want ongoing host costs to be lower than the likes of Wix, Squarespace and WordPress.com (especially if selling online).
• those who want to learn how to use WordPress (the world’s most popular web design interface by far) without having to do all the gruntwork – time and money – to get things configured and secure. Note that ‘wordpress’ is different to ‘wordpress.com’. (Confusing, huh?) They share the same framework but the latter is a commercial hosting service.
• those who are comfortable with computers and happy to use online resources if necessary. 

For more on what is and isn’t included, please see that section below.

Prices are listed on the pricing page. There is a one-time installation fee, and an upfront monthly hosting fee. There is no lock-in contract so you can cancel your subscription anytime. The installation fee allows Jacqui to partly customise your site so that you can hit the ground running. It includes:

• creating your nominated pages (but not the content on those pages).
• specifying which page is to be the blog page (optional) and which is the home page.
• linking your domain (if you have one) or assisting you to purchase one if necessary.
• adding your site title, description and favicon (small image that appears at the top of the web browser tab). We can resize that favicon image to a suitable size if you provide it to us. The client is responsible for designing and supplying the image.
• creating a menu structure (modifiable).
• installing your template of choice, if you’d like to use one. You can always override its styles later.

If you are not comfortable with computers or learning WordPress, then you can engage a web designer. Jacqui can do this for a negotiated fee or put you in touch with someone if she has no availability. Web designs often cost a few hundred dollars, depending on complexity. More formal design agencies generally charge a few thousand.

Our websites cannot function independently of our web-hosting service

Yes – this is a self-driven web service, meaning you are the designer, just as you would be with Wix or Squarespace. You can customise your site from a template or create your site from scratch. That said, if you have a static site (i.e. not requiring much change in information, unlike shops or blogs), then you may never need to log in and change anything on your site. If there is a minor update needed and you are not comfortable making that change, contact Jacqui to ask about her hourly rate. (She is very helpful and depending on the size of the task and her availability, may even tweak things for free.)

There are many links to ‘how-to’ documentation via the Resources section of Story Tappy. In particular, if you see something in the Tools menu, click through for links describing how to use that tool.

Regarding uploads, each item must be 250Kb or less. The file will fail to upload if larger than that. If an image needs to be resized before uploading, this can be done via free programs such as FastStone Photo Resizer.

Keep in mind that the bigger the image file size, the slower the website will be to load, and this in turn will affect your website’s search engine ranking.

There are certain things that cannot be added to your website, as per our Terms of Service:

• Nudity and adult content
• Defamatory content
• Illegal content.

If a site’s content is not deemed appropriate, it will be closed immediately.

As a general rule, StoryTappy does not wish to host eCommerce sites. We just don’t need the litigation risks that can be linked to business ventures. That said, for VERY low-key ventures (e.g. selling the occasional book), we can activate WooCommerce.

Alternatively, you can make use of a third-party solution. Below are some examples of how to do this:

• Open a free Stripe account and create a product there. Use Stripe to invoice the customer directly, as well as to manage all customer details. 
• Open a free Paypal business account, create a button for a specific amount, then copy and paste the button into your WordPress page via the shortcode widget. Use Paypal to manage all orders and customer details.
• Embed a Google Form on your site by using the Payable Forms addon to connect the form to your Stripe or Paypal account. Google forms are able to aggregate data into a shareable Google spreadsheet. This video and this video describe how to take payment via Google Forms. It’s worth noting that in our experience, customer and subscription information does not get carried across nicely to Stripe. You may only want to explore this option for one-off payments, not subscriptions.
•  If you wish to sell tickets to an event, you could direct your visitors to your account on Eventbrite or Try Booking. You can either link to that platform on your website or paste a shortcode from the platform onto your website (if one is available). ‘Linking out’ means viewers leave your site to complete a transaction. ‘Embedding’ (via shortcode) means viewers stay on your page to complete the process, even though all the data is handled through the 3rd party, not via our web servers.
• You could open an Etsy account to sell either physical or digital (downloadable) products. This has the added benefit of gaining worldwide exposure via the Etsy marketplace. Your website becomes your branding space and in it, you link to your Etsy product pages. This is probably the simplest of all options listed here. 

StoryTappy is unable to assist with setting up the eCommerce solutions above. If you seek simpler eCommerce solutions with sophisticated shop tools, check out Shopify, but also expect to pay more for hosting.

As per our Terms of Service, Story Tappy is not liable for any personal or commercial loss or damage incurred via your website.

Story Tappy can offer sites at such a competitive rate only because it does not offer certain things. It’s important to know from the outset what StoryTappy does and doesn’t provide, so you can weigh up your options before joining.

Included:

• Premium design tools.
• Security.
• Maintenance/updates.
• Caching (short-term memory in layman’s terms)
• 500Mb storage (ample for 99.9% of sites)
• SSL (security) certificate.
• Content delivery network (CDN)
• Initial set up of site, including template, pages and menu structure.
• Almost 900 design templates (by Astra Pro and Premium Addons Elementor).
• Analytic capability (via your Site Kit account, for you to configure).

Not included:

• Membership capability.
• Shopping cart.
• Email hosting. You may be able to create a customised email via your domain host (e.g. hello@mydomain.com.au) or otherwise use a free email service like gmail (e.g. mydomain@gmail.com).
• Marketing. If you wish to integrate your website with an email marketing platform such as Mailchimp, you can simply paste a shortcode from Mailchimp (or other platform) onto your website. Mailchimp and others usually have free plans, as well as premium.
• Form builder. Spam bots are a huge nuisance and the way around them is to pay for expensive plugins (code). We prefer to keep your costs down and suggest instead that you embed a Google Form on your site, instead of trying to build one within your site. We strongly suggest you do not use a Contact Form built directly but use an embedded Google Form instead, which has the added benefit of neatly aggregating all form data. For marketing-specific forms, you can also embed forms by the likes of Mailchimp. Both Google Forms and Mailchimp offer free plans.
• Calendar and events widget. If you wish to display a calendar with events for sale, you can use a shortcode from a third party platform like Eventbrite. Some of these platforms offer free, as well as premium, plans.
• Logo design.
• Content creation. 
• Domain purchase. Most domains are relatively cheap (approximately $20 per year). By default, your Story Tappy site would have a free subdomain address like this: https://yourbrand.storytappy.com. If you would like to use a custom domain instead, we can show you how to purchase one online and we would then map it to your website.
• Limitless storage. Websites shouldn’t have too many large files on them because they dramatically slow down the speed of the site. The average website is 40Mb, with the average page being about 2.5Mb, as you can read here. Storage at Story Tappy is 500Mb, with individual file uploads limited to 220kb. If limitless storage is important to you, we suggest you check out Squarespace or Shopify, but be prepared to pay more in ongoing fees. 
• Limitless bandwidth. If you suddenly have millions of people from all over the world visiting your site everyday, that would swamp our server, even with our content delivery network. If yours is a regular site, this will obviously not be an issue. If it is though, we may need to part ways, as per our Terms of Service. Naturally we would discuss the situation with you in advance and provide advice on how to transfer your site if necessary.
• Technical support for design niggles. Story Tappy is a small, ’boutique’ venture. We offer a low-cost product with low overheads so we cannot offer free 24/7 ticket-style support. If assistance is needed, the fee will be negotiated in advance.
• Support for third-party integrations, such as to Paypal, MailChimp, Events Calendar, Instagram and Facebook. Third party integrations are routine and expected on WordPress sites but we do not set that up. There are many online resources relevant to setting up each scenario. Note: social media platforms generally aren’t keen on directing viewers away from their sites/apps. Although these platforms say that they will integrate with WordPress, it is an arduous affair with hurdles sometimes coming from the social media side.
• The ability for public comments on your site. All comments are disabled so that there is no risk of spam-bots and malicious content being displayed. This is for your convenience as much as ours.

The name ‘Story Tappy’ hints at the design tool capability. Such tools can increase user engagement, revealing a ‘story’ by tapping (or hovering, scrolling or simply waiting – or doing something else). Some pages suit cold hard data laid bare; others suit fun and exploration. It all depends on the purpose of your site. With Story Tappy, there are countless design possibilities.