"It feels so awesome to have a Web site we are proud of — one that we control, can continue to develop and that has so many more features to enrich our users' experiences. I'm grateful for all of the help and assistance we received from you along the way. The launch process wasn't without its small bumps, but we learned from them and continue to learn more and more. And that's really invaluable."
"I really can't say that any part of the launch process didn't go well. Our multimedia editor was able to pick up everything he needed to know just by watching me post articles and pages. I was expecting to have to set aside a day or two of training for him, so I was thrilled when he uploaded our third issue with no help at all."The core of our philosophy is to provide support to your news organization so that you’re able to best utilize all that the web has to offer. We are always here to answer questions and aim to be transparent in everything that we do.
Instead of locking you into a propriety content management system, we will work with you to best utilize open source software. By doing so we’ll provide your newsroom with the foundation it needs to be nimble and prosper by taking advantages of new technologies.
Planning your new site
When you’re ready to start with Managed Hosting, fill out the signup form. This form will be emailed to the CoPress team who will then prepare a contract and invoice and send those documents back to you. This shouldn’t take more than a day or two. In addition, we’ll have you fill out an initial survey that will provide us with some information about your newsroom and your goals for future. A well-completed survey means that we can tune the entire launch process to your needs.
Once we’ve received a signed contract and first payment, we’ll set you up with a sandbox site. We can get this set up within a few working days. We’ll also schedule a comprehensive site orientation with you so that we can bring you up to speed with WordPress, answer any questions you have, and can get you started.
Preparing for launch
After the initial orientation, our goal is to empower you to configure and set up the rest of the site. The CoPress Hosting team (Daniel and Andrew, most likely) is there to answer any questions you have, and talk you through the tricky things.
A week before the website is scheduled to launch, we’ll schedule a time to initiate the launch with you. Launching a site is complex and, if you keep in close contact about what is going on, we’ll make sure that everything goes according to plan.
Post announcement
After a successful launch, you’ll get a follow-up survey so that we can see where to improve the transition process and make things even easier. We’ll also do a short follow-up session to make sure any of your questions are answered and that you’re following best practices for maintaining a website.
In case you’re wondering just how long each step will take here’s what we’ve found to be the average for new accounts:
- Processing a signup form, preparing an invoice, and getting started: 2 to 4 days
- Creating a sandbox and completing initial orientation: Within a week of receiving payment and a signed contract
- Transferring archives from College Publisher: Up to 90 days (it’s up to them, not us, sorry)
- Site launch: As soon as you think the site is complete. If your archives don’t arrive before you want to launch, we can import them when they come
Before signing up, you may have additional questions about our services or the process that we didn’t cover here. Feel free to contact us through our contact page, or email us at hosting@copress.org. If you have a question, it’s likely that someone else is going to have a similar one in the future. We’ll keep this page up to date as best we can.
