Frequently Asked Questions

Yes. We give you a rich text editor so you can modify the pages whenever you like. You can upload photos, format text, hyperlink to things, even embed video files. And you can add as many your plan allows; they'll appear in your site's primary or secondary navigation automatically.

No. If you don't need or want one of our standard features -- like a store, or a photo gallery, or an event calendar -- simply don't use it, and it won't appear on your website.

For example, until you add a product, visitors to your site won't see any Store-related options. Until you upload a picture, they won't see anything about galleries. And so on.

Probably.

We can import blog postings, comments, and sometimes images from WordPress, Blogger, Moveable Type, and Live Journal. Just log into your existing blog, export the posts you want to keep, and then open a technical support request with us using the contact form. We'll do our best to import what you have into your IndieMade site.

If you use a different blogging system, you may still be in luck, as the WordPress format is rapidly becoming the lingua franca of the blogging world. Just poke around and see if you can find a way to export to that format. We'll help you if we can.

Yes, our standard and plus plans allow you to use your own URL to "point to" your IndieMade site. You don't have to own the domain before you sign up, but if you do, you can get your new site ready before redirecting traffic from your existing site. Our handbook pages on using your own domain with IndieMade explains the process in more detail.

No, your customers are yours.  They do not need to have accounts with us in order to shop on your site.

No, all you need is a PayPal account. Your customers can pay for your products with their credit cards, with transfers from their bank accounts, or from their PayPal balances. PayPal takes a small percentage of your sales, but IndieMade doesn't take a cent.

Yes. The IndieMade system keeps track of your orders, customers, and taxes for you. You can look at reports (including end-of-year taxes), reprint order or resend invoices, add or remove line items, send notifications to customers, and so on.

Sure. Log into Etsy, then navigate to Your Etsy, then go to Store Settings > Options, then Download Data. Email the CSV file to us and we'll take care of the rest. (Each of the product tags will become a store section in your IndieMade site, so you might want to edit the file in a spreadsheet program like Excel first.)

Yes. We provide you with a number of high-quality themes for your website, and you can switch between them whenever you like. You can upload your logo or banner, pick a color scheme, select from a variety of fonts, and so on.

And of course you can change the content of your pages whenever you like -- there's a fully functional, rich text editor that makes editing a breeze.

For products, galleries, and news mentions, don't resize your images. The IndieMade system will automatically create appropriately sized copies of your images for you, so they look great in whatever theme you pick. Switch themes, and your images will automatically get resized to match.

If you're adding pictures to a blog post or a page, though, you have more flexibility. Scale them down to whatever size fits your design using your image editor of choice -- this is better than using the rich text editor's scaling functionality, which can result in pixelated images.

See our photo sizing handbook page for more details.

Any content can be edited in your dashboard.  Any sections in which you have content will appear in your navigation.  Should you choose later to remove any section -- blog, store, galleries, news or events -- just delete the section’s contents in your dashboard and it won't appear in the navigation.

All our plans are payable monthly, in advance, via PayPal. When you first sign up, you'll be emailed an activation code in the form of a hyperlink. When you click on it, you'll be forwarded over to PayPal to authorize a monthly payment starting in 30 days. Cancel during the trial period and you won't owe a dime. You can cancel anytime after that without penalty -- but you are responsible for the charges incurred up until your cancellation.

All our payment is done through PayPal, which automatically transfers funds from you to us every month. You can pay from your PayPal balance, from your bank account, or from a credit card. We never see any of these details -- so you can try out IndieMade without worrying about the privacy of your payment information.

Nope. All of our plans are pay as you go, a month at a time. You can cancel whenever you want and you'll never be billed again.

Note, though, that we don't offer pro-rated refunds. For example if your billing cycle starts on the 5th of the month and you cancel on the 15th, you don't get a credit for the 20 days you didn't actually use.

Sure. Just contact us and we'll take care of everything.

We're sorry to see you go! Just log into your account and select "Cancel site." We'll take care of the rest.

Sorry -- no.

Yes. All your data is written to multiple disk drives instantaneously, and data is backed up nightly in case of emergency. Even if a server or a disk fails, your material is safe.

No. Our servers are hosted and professionally administered by third-party network operations company Slicehost. Slicehost is a subsidiary of Rackspace, a recognized leader in hosting services. They manage and monitor the hardware for us, in a secure facility that's staffed twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. It's more expensive than running IndieMade on our own servers, but this way we can give our customers world-class service.

Yes! If you decide to move, we'll be sorry to see you go, but your data is yours.

Just ask us, and we'll zip up all your uploaded images and make them available for you to download. Our software is based on an open-source content management system called Drupal. We'll create a dump of your database for you, as well, which you can use to spin up your site elsewhere. This database includes blog postings, product information, order history, your customer list, and so on.

However, there are some gotchas: first, getting the site running on another host is not a trivial undertaking. You may have to hire someone knowledgeable in Drupal to do that for you, and this may be expensive. And you can't take our Dashboard or Themes with you -- those we can't share, as they are what make our business special. Finally, you have to be paid up. Only fair.