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As standard your MM Platform comes with 1000mb of storage. This space is filled by anything stored on your Platform for example videos, photos and documents as well as emails (if you have set up your email addresses so that they are held in a Mailbox).

If you have created any email addresses within the Platform (so that they are held in a Mailbox) then as standard each email address is given 100mb of space on the server. These can be increased to 1000mb of space per email address free of charge but do note that as advised above, each Platform is allocated a total amount of space of 1000mb and therefore you may want to add on Additional storage if you do want to increase the size of each email mailbox. More information about Additional storage can be found in our What is the Additional Storage space extra? help guide.

You can check how much storage you have left on your Platform by going to the Admin dashboard and then selecting the Hosting Account Status page.

Making Music Platform is based on a website and related software called HarmonySite, which is owned by an Australian company called Virtual Creations P/L. Virtual Creations have created Making Music Platform for Making Music and license it to Making Music for use by our members.

Once you have your own Making Music Platform set up it is yours - you own any content or data you add to it. HarmonySite owns the software that Making Music Platforms are built on.

SSL certificates are a way of making your website more secure. If you have one it will show a padlock and ‘s’ after the ‘http’.

They help protect your site from hackers ‘eavesdropping’. For example, if someone is accessing your site on a Wi-Fi network that has been compromised by hackers the hackers might be able to view the user’s activity on the site. There are two main areas of concern here:

• Viewing card details being entered for payments
• viewing passwords – which would give full access your Making Music Platform and the personal data held in it.

So, do you need one?  

You are not required by law to have an SSL certificate, but to ensure you are compliant with the Data Protection Act 2018 it is strongly advised. They improve the security of your site and the data held in it – and give confidence to users.

For groups signing up from 1 May 2024 we will therefore add this SSL Certificate as standard to the sign up price for using the service (£99 annual licence fee + £145 one off set up fee + £15 one off fee for the SSL certificate).

There are lots of different providers – most charge an annual fee. The solution we offer is a one-off fee of £15 – a worthwhile investment for added security and user confidence.

Your domain name is your website address (for example, our domain name is makingmusic.org.uk) which you purchase, register and renew each year. This is something that we can do for you.

If you already have a domain name, then you will most likely be paying a company to manage and renew it. You can carry on with this - or transfer it to us and we will manage the renewal for you, tying it in with your Making Music Platform renewal.

If you don’t have an existing website you probably don’t have a domain, but you might want to think about registering one – especially if you plan for Making Music Platform to be your public-facing

website. You can contact a company directly to do this for you – or we can look after the purchase and renewal for you, tying it in with your Making Music Platform renewal.

For more information take a look at our information about domain name management for full website users and for members area only users.

Yes we will. For us to effectively provide the service and support we will need to sometimes access the data in your Making Music Platform. Summary anonymized data (eg number of members in each group) may be gathered by us to help improve the service and our understanding of the leisure-time sector. We will only access specific, personal data when asked to do so by you (e.g. responding to a support request) and will not use this data for any purpose other than to provide support. You can read more in our Making Music Data agreement.

As standard your Making Music Platform is backed up once every 24 hours, and once every month.  Whenever a new back-up is taken the old one is deleted – so there are always two backups available - one from last night and one from the first day of the current month.

The back-up is stored on the same server as your ‘live’ Making Music Platform. So, if that server is damaged then, in theory, your live site and back up may be lost. In practice this is very unlikely – we use a professional server company who have lots of safeguards in place.

If a back-up needs to be retrieved due to a technical malfunction it is free. If you require a back-up retrieval due to you accidentally deleting something there may be a charge if it is a complicated query.

We also offer an additional Extra Nightly Backup option, for a small annual fee. Your website is backed up every night and all historical copies of your data are kept. So, you have a version of your site from every day it has existed. These back-ups are stored on a different server to your ‘live’ site so if something happened to the live site server the back-up would still exist. Data restorations are also free if you are paying for this service.

All data is stored in the UK:

• Making Music Platforms and the data held in them are housed on physical servers located in the UK.
• If you are using the nightly back-up optional extra the backed-up data is housed on a PC server located in the Making Music offices (UK).
• If you are using the Additional storage optional extra some data will be stored in an Amazon cloud facility within the UK.

Where support queries are referred to HarmonySite (‘What support do you provide?’) it will mean some data is transferred to Australia (where HarmonySite is based). We have an agreement in place to sure this is done in line with UK law.

Find out more in the Making Music Platform data agreement

Yes. Whilst the security of online data can never be 100% guaranteed your MM Platform comes with security features to help protect the data:

• All access to the site is password protected - so you control who has access to the data
• All Making Music Platforms will be housed on a dedicated physical server based in the UK and managed by a professional server company called UK hosting. They have relevant best practice safeguards and security policies in place to protect your data. 

See also:

• What is SSL and do I need one?
• Is the data backed up?

MM Platform is built to be used by people who are not IT experts. You don’t need to know html or php – and if you don’t know what those things are, that doesn’t matter either!

You do however need to be computer literate. If you can use Microsoft word and Excel and use the internet to manage your day to day activities (shopping, banking, travel etc) then you should be fine.

That said MM Platform is a powerful tool so some parts are a bit complicated. For these areas patience and methodical thinking are the key skill rather than technical know-how.

Throughout your set-up Making Music team will be available to support you, and there are lots of detailed ‘how to’ guides to help as well.

This will vary from group to group, depending on how many of the features you are using and how many people you have working on it.

As a rough rule of thumb, we think a few people each working for a few hours per week could have a full Making Music Platform up and running in a couple of months.

Find out more