Hosting and Domains
With our hosting service, you are not restricted to our design services. You can have FTP or other access to your hosting account, but then you assume responsibility for the results. Anyone a Client provides their FTP information or account login information to, can make changes to their account. Client is therefore responsible for any actions taken on their hosting account by anyone other than Lotus Petal Designs LLC (Lotus Petal Designs).
Hosting is provided through Host Gator and all hosting services will then be subject to their Terms of Service in addition to the Terms on this site.
Payment
Establishment of any service is dependent upon receipt of payment for invoiced charges by Lotus Petal Designs LLC (Lotus Petal Designs). Subsequent payments are due on the date specified on the invoice.
Failure to Pay
Lotus Petal Designs LLC (Lotus Petal Designs) may temporarily deny or terminate service upon the failure of the customer to pay the charges when due. Such termination or denial will not relieve until the customer has paid all charges due. Down time due to non-Payment does not count as down time for the purposes of our 99% uptime guarantee.
Contact information
Lotus Petal Designs LLC (Lotus Petal Designs) can always be contacted via e-mail at info@lotuspetaldesigns.com or via phone at the number that is provided to current Clients. Customers are responsible for providing Lotus Petal Designs LLC (Lotus Petal Designs) with current contact information for themselves as well. The information provided in writing via e-mail when contacting or contracting with Lotus Petal Designs LLC (Lotus Petal Designs) for services is deemed the appropriate contact information for that Client unless that information is changed in writing by Client. Lotus Petal Designs LLC (Lotus Petal Designs) is not responsible for billing not received, login changes, or any other information not received by Client due to failure to provide updated contact information or messages filtered out as spam (it is Client's responsibility to check their Spam or Junk folder if you are using an e-mail service that filters messages).
Termination of hosting or domain management
A customer can terminate their hosting at any time by notifying Lotus Petal Designs LLC (Lotus Petal Designs) in writing. Hosting fees already paid will not be refunded unless hosting was not provided with at least 95% uptime (partial refunds allowed based on our 99% uptime guarantee, but not full refunds unless it falls below 95% uptime). All open invoices must be paid before domain names will be released for transfer to another registrar or for hosting of a managed domain name to be directed to new servers. All domains registered by Lotus Petal Designs LLC (Lotus Petal Designs) are registered under Lotus Petal Designs LLC (Lotus Petal Designs) until they are released following either final acceptance and completed payment for services that include no hosting or domain services or termination of those same services. Please note that domain registration is a separate issue from hosting. If you have any question about the difference, please ask.
Refunds for Domain Registrations
Lotus Petal Designs LLC (Lotus Petal Designs) utilizes an industry standard third party Registrar for domain name registration services. Once an order is placed with us for a new domain name, we register the domain for the customer through the Registrar. Domains registered in this manner are not eligible for a refund and the cost for such domains will be subtracted from any service refund from Lotus Petal Designs LLC (Lotus Petal Designs). Please note that domain registration is a separate issue from hosting. If you have any question about the difference, please ask.
Uptime
Lotus Petal Designs LLC (Lotus Petal Designs) guarantees that your website will be up and running at least 99% of the time during any 12-month period. This guarantee includes network uptime, server uptime, web server and service uptime. It does not cover any areas where Lotus Petal Designs LLC (Lotus Petal Designs) has no direct influence, such as backbone provider failures, fibre-optic main line cuts, DNS or Registrar issues with subscriber's domain name, routing issues between subscriber location and Host Gator data center. The uptime guarantee is also not applicable if the service interruption was caused by external issues such as Acts of God, Wars or any other natural or unnatural events that Lotus Petal Designs LLC (Lotus Petal Designs) cannot directly influence. To request a credit due to an uptime concern, please submit a request for this guarantee directly to Lotus Petal Designs LLC (info@lotuspetaldesigns.com) and include details of down time experienced (must contact us during down so that we can confirm the problem is on our end).
Use of Website
A. Prohibition of Adult Content
Subscribers of Lotus Petal Designs LLC (Lotus Petal Designs) services (through Host Gator) are prohibited from storing or posting adult content, or links to adult content, through the subscribed service. All material of pornographic nature is considered adult content. Online image galleries whose primary purpose is the public display of fine art or artistic mediums are not considered to be adult content.
B. Prohibition of Offensive Behavior
Racist, intolerant, "hate", defamatory, "stalking", invitations to fight, threatening or any communication of any nature that we decide, in our sole discretion, as being improper, will result in service termination without prior notice.
C. Intellectual Property Provisions
Subscribers of Lotus Petal Designs LLC (Lotus Petal Designs) services are prohibited from storing or posting content or links to content that infringe, or otherwise violate the intellectual property rights of third parties (e.g. trademark, patent or copyright infringements). All content provided within or via this site is protected by US and international copyright laws, patent laws, trademark regulations and laws, and various intellectual property laws and international treaties and agreements. No intellectual property of any nature contained within or via this Site may be copied, published, reverse engineered, decompiled, exchanged, traded, or broadcast in any way without the written permission of the content owner.
"Fair Use" Resource Assignment
Lotus Petal Designs LLC (Lotus Petal Designs) offers commercially reasonable high-limit disk space and/or other resources, such as bandwidth transfer, number of e-mail accounts or FTP accounts. File quota limits are enforced to ensure system operating integrity and reliability. The intention of Lotus Petal Designs LLC (Lotus Petal Designs) is to provide ample resources for customer convenience, so that customers needn't to worry about exceeding limits.
It is acknowledged by users of Lotus Petal Designs LLC (Lotus Petal Designs) services that these resource allotments are optimized and dedicated towards serving web documents and self- need e-mail / FTP services and is not to be used as offsite storage area for electronic files, or as a provisioning service for third party e-mail or FTP hosts. All downloadable files or files stored on the server must be available for download via a HTML document stored on the Internet in a publicly or privately accessible area, and must be directly related to the general nature of the website index. Illegal content such as pirated software, music or other media are strictly prohibited and are not allowed on Lotus Petal Designs LLC (Lotus Petal Designs) or Host Gator servers.
It is also acknowledged by users of Lotus Petal Designs LLC (Lotus Petal Designs) services that these resources are limited by physical restraints of technology as well as by reasonable limits of a shared resource environment. Users must realize that server technology limits the amount of available resources for use, including but not limited to disk drive space, CPU processing power, memory and access speed. Lotus Petal Designs LLC (through Host Gator) takes measures to utilize the latest and most economically feasible mass server market technology available to provide services.
It is furthermore acknowledged by users of Lotus Petal Designs LLC (Lotus Petal Designs) services that all provided services are of a shared-server nature, and other users are sharing the provided space. Customer accounts are placed on a server with up to hundreds of other users. Host Gator, along with many other hosting providers use this business model in order to offer web hosting services en masse at inexpensive and affordable rates. It is acknowledged that any single account is entitled to utilize the server resources, within reason, up to what is allotted or by what is physically available. If resources become scarce, Lotus Petal Designs LLC (Lotus Petal Designs) reserves the right to limit users of the affected machine to a lower limit to preserve the effectiveness of the service for all users. If a particular user is in extreme excess of what the average users of the machine have in use (actually used) of their resource allotments, that customer may be asked to remove content, cut resource usage, or relocate to a dedicated service provider. This policy only applies to web sites that are considered to be abusive in service, disk space or resource consumption and where it is evident that the "fair-use" of resources among customers has been breached, particularly in regards to disk space, bandwidth or CPU processing power utilization. Additionally, web sites that are found to contain either/or no HTML documents, a large number of unlinked files are subject to warning, suspension or cancellation at the sole discretion of Lotus Petal Designs LLC (Lotus Petal Designs). If a "Fair-Use" breach occurs, which's determination is solely up to Lotus Petal Designs LLC (Lotus Petal Designs), subscriber may have to remove files from or reduce access to subscriber's account to an extent as determined by Lotus Petal Designs LLC (Lotus Petal Designs), in order to restore full serviceability to other subscribers affected by the breach. In any case, the subscriber will be notified of any actions that Lotus Petal Designs LLC (Lotus Petal Designs) may have to take.
SPAM and Unsolicited Commercial E-mail (UCE)
Lotus Petal Designs LLC (Lotus Petal Designs) takes a zero tolerance approach to the sending of Unsolicited Commercial E-mail (UCE) or SPAM through our network and services. Customers of Lotus Petal Designs LLC (Lotus Petal Designs) may not use, or permit others to use, our network to partake in UCE distribution. Customers of Lotus Petal Designs LLC (Lotus Petal Designs) or Host Gator may not host or permit hosting of sites or information that is advertised by UCE from other networks. Upon notification of an alleged violation of our SPAM policy, Lotus Petal Designs LLC (Lotus Petal Designs) will initiate an immediate investigation. During the investigation, Lotus Petal Designs LLC (Lotus Petal Designs) may restrict customer access to the network to prevent further violations. Subscriber will thereafter be advised of the situation. If a customer is found to be in violation of these Terms and Conditions or the TOS of Host Gator, Lotus Petal Designs LLC (Lotus Petal Designs) may, at its sole discretion, unilaterally restrict, suspend or terminate the violating customer's account. Further, Lotus Petal Designs LLC (Lotus Petal Designs) reserves the right to pursue civil remedies for any costs associated with the investigation of a substantiated policy violation. Lotus Petal Designs LLC (Lotus Petal Designs) will notify law enforcement officials if the violation is believed to be a criminal offense.
Prohibited Scripts and Applications
Lotus Petal Designs LLC (Lotus Petal Designs) strictly prohibits the use of certain scripts such as IRC, Proxy, SSH, Telnet, or any other script which may overwhelm server resources due to the inherent nature of the script itself or by defect in the coding of the script. If a user script is found to be in violation of this clause, or is found to be overwhelming system resources, the user may be requested to remove the script, or in cases of system resource abuse, it may be removed without prior warning and/or the user account may be suspended for further review.
Disclosure to Law Enforcement
These Terms and Conditions specifically prohibits the use of our service for illegal activities. Therefore, subscriber agrees that Lotus Petal Designs LLC (Lotus Petal Designs) may disclose any and all subscriber information including assigned IP numbers, account history, account use, etc. to any court or law enforcement agency that requests such information, upon receipt of a subpoena, warrant or other legally binding order, without consent or notification to the customer.
Indemnification
Each party (the "Indemnifying Party") hereby indemnifies the other party (the "Indemnified Party"), its officers, directors, employees and agents, and agrees to defend and hold them harmless from and against any and all liability, damage, loss or expense (including reasonable attorneys fees) arising from any claim, demand, action or proceeding based upon the alleged breach or untruthfulness of any of the Indemnifying Party's representations or warranties, or incurred in the settlement or avoidance of any such claim, provided, however, that the Indemnified Party shall give prompt notice to the Indemnifying Party of the assertion of any such claims and provided further that Indemnifying Party shall have the right to select counsel and control the defense thereof, subject to right of the Indemnified Party to participate therein.
Severability
If any provision of these Terms and Conditions shall be held to be invalid or unenforceable for any reason, the remaining provisions shall continue to be valid and enforceable. If a court finds that any provision of these Terms and Conditions are invalid or unenforceable, but that by limiting such provision it would become valid and enforceable, then such provision shall be deemed to be written, construed, and enforced as so limited.
Data Integrity
The customer is responsible for keeping a complete and current copy of their website files as a backup on a remote system (not solely on our servers) except in the case where Lotus Petal Designs LLC (Lotus Petal Designs) is providing Managed Hosting services as well.
Lotus Petal Designs LLC (Lotus Petal Designs) is NOT RESPONSIBLE for any lost files, information or data, except in Managed Hosting accounts, where only the web site files will be backed up. E-mail and database backups are still the sole responsibility of the client unless such services are explicitly contracted with Lotus Petal Designs LLC (Lotus Petal Designs), in addition to any hosting and/or design services.
Lotus Petal Designs LLC (through Host Gator) makes regular internal backups of internal system configurations and databases. These backups are NOT intended for keeping backups of subscriber websites. Although Lotus Petal Designs LLC's backups may include subscriber sites and information for disaster recovery purposes, these backups are not to be relied on by the subscriber. Lotus Petal Designs LLC (Lotus Petal Designs) does not guarantee to possess the most current copy of a subscriber's website in our own backups.
Websites and Digital Graphics Services
A. Ordering and Planning Process
Immediately after committing to a design project with Lotus Petal Designs LLC (Lotus Petal Designs), 50% payment is required before the commencement of the project. For some projects, a lower down payment may be negotiated but full payment must be received before a project can be published, even on a test server. The customer is responsible for providing the text, logos and requirements for the basic look and feel of the website. The customer's quick responsiveness is mandatory at all stages of the project, but particularly during the planning process. Failure to provide all required information within the specified time frames can result in a delay or cancellation of the project. If and how much of a refund will be issued depends on the amount of work already completed and is at the sole discretion of Lotus Petal Designs LLC (Lotus Petal Designs) as defined further below.
B. Revision Process
The total revisions allowed will be agreed in advance and revisions must not exceed the time allowed by that customer's design plan. As soon as Lotus Petal Designs LLC (Lotus Petal Designs) provides a design and project update the customer must respond within three business days with all necessary feedback and corrections. If the customer does not respond within the specified time frame it will be assumed that the suggested design and changes were accepted and approved so the work may progress further towards finalization.
C. Required Timelines
If a client or thier duly designated representative fails to provide content, feedback or otherwise prevents meaningful progress on the project within the specified timelines for that project or for a period exceeding 30 days if no timeline is specified, all costs for work performed up to that point will be billed and payment required within 30 days. If this delay occurs at the point where client has access to update content for a site in development, the remaining balance for the project will be invoiced. Projects that are not completed within 60 days of receipt of the downpayment may be required to make progress payments for work performed up to that date. Clients should expect to be billed for the balance of projects, including any launch related charges, when they are given access to edit content for the site. These invoices will always be due within 30 days and must be paid by the due date, even if the client is not yet ready to launch at that time. If a site in development is stalled by client's failure to move forward or comply with any project requirements for more than 60 days, that site may be removed from our server or client may be denied access until such time as they are ready to make meaningful progress on the site. Additional fees may apply to re-enable a site in development. If client has already paid in full, they may choose to move the site in development to their server but additional fees may apply if the move to thier server was not quoted as part of the original project or client may be charged an additional fee for launch if the move of a development site to their server is used in place of live launch.
D. Approval Process
During the project development process Lotus Petal Designs LLC (Lotus Petal Designs) provides regular design and project updates. While Lotus Petal Designs LLC (Lotus Petal Designs) performs our own testing of the entire website and functionality, the final responsibility lies with the customer to ensure that the modules and the complete project has been tested for any deficiencies or errors and to confirm that the site is operating as originally intended. It is expected that the customer responds with any feedback and corrections within the timelines specified with every update, to ensure that the project can be completed on time. If the customer does not respond within seven business days (unless a longer time frame is pre-agreed in writing) upon delivery of the website's final version, it will be assumed that the work is accepted and the completion of the project approved. Any further changes must then be requested in the form of maintenance for the existing website.
D. Refund Policy
Approval of a design constitutes acceptance and no refunds will be given after this point. If a customer pays up-front for design services but is unable to agree on a final design due to creative differences, a refund can be negotiated based on the amount of work performed by Lotus Petal Designs LLC (Lotus Petal Designs). Satisfaction is our highest priority and every attempt will be made to come to an equitable arrangement.
If an order is cancelled within 3 days of making the payment and before any work has been done, we will refund 80% of the payment (applies to design services only). If the work has already begun the maximum refund will be 50% of the payment. There will usually be no refund if more than 50% of the work has been completed. Under special circumstances Lotus Petal Designs LLC (Lotus Petal Designs) reserves the right to negotiate and refund an appropriate portion of the amount paid by the customer.
E. Ownership and Copyright
Upon final payment and approval of the completed website or graphic design project, our client becomes the owner of the designed material (finished product only, does not include any PSD files or other steps in the design process). Client is free to take the site to another developer or host with another company. Please note that all the content on the customer's website is the sole responsibility of its respective owner. Lotus Petal Designs LLC (Lotus Petal Designs) is not responsible or liable for any copyright or trademark claims regarding third party logos, trademarks or names used on the website. They are the property and responsibility of the respective owners. The customer agrees that Lotus Petal Designs LLC (Lotus Petal Designs) may use the created website or graphic in our portfolio to showcase completed work to prospective customers and for its own marketing purposes such as, but not limited to, newsletters.
Additional Services
Lotus Petal Designs LLC (Lotus Petal Designs) uses Host Gator for hosting services, which includes domain e-mail, so all hosting and e-mail services are subject to their Terms of Service.