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Frequently Asked Questions

General

  1. What is CheckDog?
  2. Why do I need CheckDog? I already have a spell checker in Word, my HTML editor and a spell checker in my editor on my content management system.
  3. Why is it important to have a website free from spelling errors?
  4. What makes CheckDog unique?
  5. How does CheckDog work?
  6. Who developed CheckDog?
  7. Is my information secure with CheckDog?
  8. Do you offer a reseller or affiliate program?
  9. How did you come up with the idea for CheckDog - what is the "CheckDog story"?
  10. What type of support do you offer?
  11. Will your scans overload my site?
  12. Can we install CheckDog on one of our servers?

Features

  1. What types of content on my website will CheckDog review?
  2. What elements of a website will CheckDog not be able to check?
  3. Does CheckDog have the option of a grammar check?
  4. What languages does CheckDog currently support?
  5. Can we scan our website with 2 language options at the same time? For example English and Spanish?
  6. How long does it take for CheckDog to review my site?
  7. How accurate is CheckDog?
  8. How can custom dictionaries assist with my results?
  9. How do I set-up CheckDog so that it does its magic automatically?
  10. What if I don't want to spell check certain content on my sites such as blog comments?
  11. I have submitted my site for a spell check scan and CheckDog seems to have only scanned 1 page, what happened?
  12. I performed the same scan twice but saw different results, why?
  13. Can I monitor my site for errors through a RSS feed?
  14. Will I be able to check multiple sites within one account?
  15. Can I check content behind a login protected site or on our intranet with CheckDog?
  16. Can CheckDog check the spelling of text in images or Flash content?
  17. Can CheckDog automatically update my site with corrected words?
  18. Can you help with rewriting my content and other services?
  19. Does your system have a link checker?

Billing

  1. What payment options does CheckDog offer?
  2. What currency is your service priced in?
  3. I want to pay in $US and by AMEX - I am on a monthly plan, why do I have to re-enter my credit card details every month?
  4. Are my billing details safe with CheckDog?
  5. How can I cancel my CheckDog account?
  6. How can I downgrade my CheckDog account to a lower plan?
  7. If we upgrade will we be billed twice this month? If we downgrade will we be prorated?
  8. I'm on a subscription plan - when will my credit card be charged?
  9. What is your refund policy?
  10. Do you offer a special rate to registered charities or not for profit organisations?
  11. Are there signup fees? Termination fees? Any hidden fees we should know about?

Answers

General

  1. What is CheckDog?

    CheckDog is a web-based application that reviews a web site and reports back on spelling errors.

    CheckDog provides the user with easy to understand reports and screenshots of all relevant errors.

    Suggestions of correct words for each spelling mistake are provided.

    CheckDog can also be configured to scan a website at pre-determined intervals and notify the user of newly introduced errors.

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  2. Why do I need CheckDog? I already have a spell checker in Word, my HTML editor and a spell checker in my editor on my content management system.

    "Front end" spell checkers similar to the ones contained in Word, Dreamweaver and other editors work well. However they rely on the website editor reviewing all website content and all content changes through the editor/spell checker before publishing the content to the website.

    There are several scenarios where spelling mistakes can easily be missed and introduced into live content.

    i) Direct editing of content in a content management system.

    It is common for website editors to prepare content in Word or Dreamweaver. They then run the content through the relevant spell checker to identify and correct the errors. The website content is then published to the website.

    On review of the live website the editor often realises that they want to make some content changes. Content changes are often then made directly via the content management system bypassing any spell checking. Errors often get introduced into the content at this stage.

    ii) Multiple website editors
    Large websites (for example University websites) can have several hundred people contributing core content to the website through a variety of methods (directly, via a content management system etc.). This makes it extremely difficult for the website manager(s) to quality control the web content with respect to spelling errors.

    iii) Websites built and managed by non-native speakers
    As an example non-English speakers frequently are responsible for the build and management of websites. Non-native speakers are more prone to making spelling mistakes.

    iv) Third party content
    Many websites (for example ecommerce websites) obtain data from third parties. This third party content may not have been reviewed for spelling errors.

    v) Title tags, menu items and other text elements.
    Title tags, menu items, alternate text etc are difficult to check for spelling errors. CheckDog will identify these hard to find spelling errors in these text elements.

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  3. Why is it important to have a website free from spelling errors?

    Spelling mistakes on a website can negatively impact the credibility of an organisation. Furthermore if important keywords are misspelled search rankings can suffer. Matt Cutts a well respected software engineer at Google makes some comments about the importance of spell checking http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-spell-check-your-web-site/

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  4. What makes CheckDog unique?

    CheckDog has been designed with one goal in mind: to make it extremely simple to keep websites free from spelling errors. We have developed our spellFOCUS spelling engine to help identify genuine spelling errors and minimise false positives. Our aim was to build a system that would provide immediate value without complex configuration of custom dictionaries or require human intervention.

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  5. How does CheckDog work?

    After submitting your url the CheckDog system will review your website and check all content for spelling errors.

    CheckDog will discover all of your individual web pages as long as they are linked to other pages somewhere in your site.

    Using our spellFOCUS technology and any custom dictionaries that you have created, CheckDog will report back on genuine spelling errors.

    If you have a Site Map or RSS feed, you should use this as the starting point for the scan since it guarantees CheckDog will find the content linked from it.

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  6. Who developed CheckDog?

    CheckDog was developed by the team at Melon Media based in Sydney Australia.

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  7. Is my information secure with CheckDog?

    The security and privacy of our customers' user information and report data is of paramount importance. We will NEVER sell any user information or report information. Our application is secured on a systems level and on a physical level in one of the world's leading data centres.

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  8. Do you offer a reseller or affiliate program?

    Yes. We offer special reseller rates to pre-qualified companies such as web design companies, ISPs, media companies etc. We also have an affiliate program. We do not offer a white label version of the system but we do offer the system in a co-branded format. Contact us to find out more about our reseller or affiliate program.

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  9. How did you come up with the idea for CheckDog - what is the "CheckDog story"?

    During March 2008 the founder of CheckDog made a casual comment about how "it would be really good if we could automate the spell checking of some of our clients' websites." Our developers took on the challenge and developed a prototype over the weekend.

    We invited one of our clients into our office and we gave him a demonstration of the prototype. The CheckDog prototype identified several significant and many obscure spelling mistakes on his site. Our client was very impressed.

    The next day we branded the product and contacted TechCrunch - the famous start up blog - to tell them about our new groundbreaking product. Within 4 hours TechCrunch ran a story on us and beta tester registration requests started coming through thick and fast.

    The CheckDog adventure had begun!

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  10. What type of support do you offer?

    Support is offered by email (help@checkdog.com) and by telephone (+61 2 9232 3722).

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  11. Will your scans overload my site?

    We throttle the maximum number of simultaneous requests at any time to a single domain. However, there is a low possibility that scanning your site may temporarily overload your server's resources. If you are worried about the scans overloading your website, you should try a scan with a small number of pages first. If you find your server is being overloaded please let us know and we will change the throttle for your domain.

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  12. Can we install CheckDog on one of our servers?

    Whilst CheckDog has not been designed as a stand alone product we will consider these requests on an individual basis.

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Features

  1. What types of content on my website will CheckDog review?

    CheckDog will review the following content
    • Core text content.
    • Alternate text on images.
    • All text in meta tags
    • All text in title tags.
    • All text in menu items - unless menus are build in Flash or entirely in JavaScript.


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  2. What elements of a website will CheckDog not be able to check?

    • Flash content.
    • Content in PDF documents.
    • Menus built completely in JavaScript.
    • "Image" text.


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  3. Does CheckDog have the option of a grammar check?

    No. A simple grammar check may be added to CheckDog in the future.

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  4. What languages does CheckDog currently support?

    CheckDog currently supports English (International, UK, USA, Canadian). We plan to support the major European languages in the future.

    If you would like a specific language to be added please email us at admin@checkdog.com.

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  5. Can we scan our website with 2 language options at the same time? For example English and Spanish?

    No at the moment you can only scan your site using English. In the future we plan to introduce other languages and the ability to select multiple languages for one web page.

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  6. How long does it take for CheckDog to review my site?

    CheckDog initiates your site scan immediately on submission and reviews your site very quickly. Site scans can vary from a couple of minutes to an hour dependant on a number of factors including:
    • The speed of your website.
    • The speed of the connection between the CheckDog servers and your website.
    • The amount of content on each of your web page(s).
    • The size of your custom dictionaries.
    • The number of pages on your website.
    • The number of active concurrent CheckDog scans in progress (we monitor resource usage and allocate resources as necessary).

    You will have access to your reports immediately upon completion of your site scan.

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  7. How accurate is CheckDog?

    CheckDog will identify all errors that are unambiguous spelling mistakes. Furthermore using our unique spellFOCUS technology CheckDog will classify an error as a "likely", "probable" or "possible" to assist the user in identifying genuine spelling errors.

    As an example CheckDog will identify "theiir" as a spelling mistake.

    CheckDog won't identify fur as a spelling mistake in "...fur example the second building..." as fur is a correctly spelled word used in the wrong context.

    CheckDog makes use of a high quality dictionary word list and you can further enhance the quality of your results with custom dictionaries.

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  8. How can custom dictionaries assist with my results?

    You can create unlimited custom dictionaries so that CheckDog will ignore words in your custom dictionaries.

    You can also make use of supplied shared custom dictionaries for example to ignore technology words.

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  9. How do I set-up CheckDog so that it does its magic automatically?

    There is a "schedule scan" option whereby you can schedule scans hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly. Furthermore RSS feeds get generated with each scheduled scan allowing you to get notified of your errors.

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  10. What if I don't want to spell check certain content on my sites such as blog comments?

    CheckDog has a content filter whereby you can specify certain content to be ignored.

    To make use of the comment filter:

    If you can read HTML, find the element in the page that contains what you want to filter (largest wrapping element).

    It will need to have either an id or class parameter e.g. <div id="my_name" class="my_class">
    To filter on the id, use #my_name
    To filter on the class, use .my_name

    View a tutorial on how to set-up filters for your scan

    video

    To make it easier to find the element you can use a tool called Firebug in Firefox. It has an inspect button and as you hover over parts of the page it highlights the relevant elements.

    You can also contact us and we will assist you with setting up your filters (free of charge).

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  11. I have submitted my site for a spell check scan and CheckDog seems to have only scanned 1 page, what happened?

    CheckDog will only discover pages linked from a page on your site and that contains text content. If your pages are constructed using "frames", use JavaScript menus, use Flash menus, link to different domains then our crawler may not find them. If you have questions relating to your specific site please feel free to contact us.

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  12. I performed the same scan twice but saw different results, why?

    Occasionally two scans will return different results from the same starting conditions. This can be due to a number of reasons;
    • One of the pages on your server took too long to respond or your server had a temporary error.
    • Some content on one or more of your pages changes dynamically with each time it is loaded.
    • The page was updated between the scans.

    If you are having problems with this, please contact us and we will be able to help.

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  13. Can I monitor my site for errors through a RSS feed?

    Yes you can monitor your sites' errors through RSS feeds.

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  14. Will I be able to check multiple sites within one account?

    Yes you can check multiple sites from your account. Limitations may apply according to what plan you are on.

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  15. Can I check content behind a login protected site or on our intranet with CheckDog?

    CheckDog is designed to scan publicly accessible websites. However on the custom plan - depending on the set-up of your site - we can configure your account to access your web content behind a login and password and/or intranet.

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  16. Can CheckDog check the spelling of text in images or Flash content?

    No - CheckDog cannot check the spelling in images or check the spelling in Flash content - CheckDog can only check the spelling of non image text.

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  17. Can CheckDog automatically update my site with corrected words?

    No - CheckDog can't automatically update your website. On the custom plan there is the option of error correction where we monitor your website's errors and make corrections as needed on your behalf.

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  18. Can you help with rewriting my content and other services?

    Yes our specialist content staff that can help optimise your content for users and search engines. Contact us on admin@checkdog.com for further information.

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  19. Does your system have a link checker?

    Watch this space ;)

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Billing

  1. What payment options does CheckDog offer?

    We accept Visa, Mastercard, and AMEX. For custom accounts there are several additional options including payment in arrears on invoice.

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  2. What currency is your service priced in?

    You can pay in $US or $AU. Australian customers are required to pay in $AU and customers outside of Australia are required to pay in $US. An exception is non-Australian customers who wish to pay by AMEX - they can select between $US (they will have to re-enter their card every month) and $AU (no need to enter their card, but conversion to $AU will occur on their credit card statement).

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  3. I want to pay in $US and by AMEX - I am on a monthly plan, why do I have to re-enter my credit card details every month?

    At this stage AMEX USA can't offer us a "stored payment" facility hence the need to re-enter your card details. To avoid re-entering your credit card details each month you can either select to pay in $AU or choose Visa/Mastercard.

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  4. Are my billing details safe with CheckDog?

    We do not store any credit card details on our system. We make use of Australia's leading payment gateways and banks to process our payments.

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  5. How can I cancel my CheckDog account?

    Within your account there is the option to cancel your account. This will prevent any future charges. If you cancel your account, you will still have access to the features until the end of your current billing cycle at which point you will be downgraded

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  6. How can I downgrade my CheckDog account to a lower plan?

    Within your account you will be able to change the plan that you are on.

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  7. If we upgrade will we be billed twice this month? If we downgrade will we be prorated?

    You can upgrade or downgrade your plan at any time.

    If you upgrade your plan, the remaining value on your previous plan will be prorated as discount against your initial payment on your new plan and your billing cycle will restart from the time of upgrade.

    If you downgrade your plan, your initial plan will remain active until the end of your current billing period. At the end of that period you will switched to your new plan and will be charged the lower rate.

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  8. I'm on a subscription plan - when will my credit card be charged?

    Billing cycles operate on a 30 day cycle. Once the 30 days are up you will get charged for your next billing cycle.

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  9. What is your refund policy?

    CheckDog is a month-to-month, pay-as-you-go service so we don't provide refunds. You are billed every 30 days for the service. You can cancel the service at any time and you won't be charged again, but you are responsible for any charges already incurred. The 24 hour pass is charged in advance and there is no refund.

    There is a 7 day money back no questions asked policy for new customers.

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  10. Do you offer a special rate to registered charities or not for profit organisations?

    If you are a registered charity we are open to providing you with a discount on a case by case basis. Our favourite charities are animal, environmental and children related charities. Unfortunately we cannot offer discounts to not for profit organisations.

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  11. Are there signup fees? Termination fees? Any hidden fees we should know about?

    Absolutely not. We don't charge signup fees, termination fees, or any additional fees. The price you pay is simply the fixed monthly fee based on the plan you've chosen or the price for the 24 hour pass. We believe in 100% transparency when it comes to pricing.

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