About

StoryTappy is a boutique one-person venture with low overheads, which keeps costs down for clients. Jacqui’s aim is to simplify the web design process for others, while offering them premium tools that benefit from economies of scale. She recognises that while many people are perfectly capable of creating their own sites, many others don’t have the time nor energy to invest in computer-land, especially when it comes to things like nit-picky spacing issues (padding and margins) and stacking order (Z score). What’s more, StoryTappy’s premium plugins allow for fancy features, as described on its Resources site.  Wix and Squarespace simply don’t offer those.

The aim of StoryTappy is not endless clientele but low-key, reliable ones who don’t run massive or complex sites. They are the ones who needn’t pay the higher fees for services like Shopify, Squarespace and WooCommerce.

For an initial set-up fee, Jacqui will create the frame of a website (pages, menu structure, installed template etc). The client can then choose to develop the rest of their site on their own (assuming they can become familiar with WordPress Elementor),  or pay for design sessions alongside Jacqui – where she makes changes in real time based on their suggestions. Those sessions are based pro-rata at an hourly rate. For more, please see the Pricing tab.

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 image conversions to AVIF for a smaller file size. 
• those who want ongoing host costs to be lower than the likes of Wix, Squarespace and WordPress.com.
• 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 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 hosting service as well.
• those who are comfortable with computers and happy to use online resources if necessary. 
• those who do not need a website for membership services or direct eCommerce sales. 

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 set-up fee, and an ongoing monthly web-hosting fee.

For design development (if you would like make changes beyond a template that can be installed during the set-up), Jacqui will work with you at an hourly rate – so you can see how things are done and make real-time decisions about how you want things. This is much faster than sending messages to and fro across emails.

There is no lock-in contract to the web-hosting so you can cancel your subscription at any time.

The set-up fee allows Jacqui to partly customise your site so that you can hit the ground running. It includes:

• creating your nominated number of 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 – which you would need to supply). We can resize that favicon image to a suitable size.
• creating a menu structure (modifiable).
• installing your template of choice, if you’d like to use one. You can always override its styles later.

Note that Story Tappy websites cannot function independently from its web-hosting service, since it relies on a certain mix of plugins and themes.

Yes. Just as you would with Wix or Squarespace, you can customise your site from a template or from scratch. If you have a straightforward, static site (i.e. not requiring frequent updates, unlike shops or blogs), you may never need to log in and change anything on your site once it’s been set up. 

There are links for ‘how-to’ documentation on the Resources section of Story Tappy. If you see an interesting widget in the Tools menu there, click through to its description for further links there.

Regarding uploads, each item must be 250Kb or less. The file will fail to upload if it is larger than that.

If an image needs to be resized before uploading, this can be done via free programs such as FastStone Photo Resizer.

Also, instead of using PNG or JPG file types, AVIF or WEBP have greater compression (for smaller file sizes). To convert file types, you can use tools such as Save Image As Type and Cloud Convert.

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 – as well as visitor experience.

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.