We build and maintain websites on open source content management systems -Joomla, WordPress, Drupal- and we leave them up and running, with whoever is going to edit them trained to do it without depending on anyone.
What to look at before commissioning a website
Setting up a website is easy; having it still working in three years is not. This is what usually fails when nobody took care of it in time, and what we take care of:
- Where it is hosted, and what the small print says. Cheap hosting ends up expensive the day you have to migrate in a hurry.
- Access to the server, yours or your support provider’s. Without it, every incident depends on somebody outside answering.
- The content manager chosen for what it does, not for what people say. All three are good; they are not good for the same things.
- The backups, off the server and tested. A backup that has never been restored is an assumption.
- Structure and features thought through before starting, which is when changing them is cheap.
- Search engine visibility from the start: clean addresses, structured data and speed.
- An encryption certificate with automatic renewal. Browsers now flag a site without HTTPS.
- Accessibility and mobile. More than half of visits arrive from a phone, and accessibility is a legal requirement in the public sector.
- Data protection: forms, cookies and notices as the GDPR requires them.
- Planned maintenance. An unpatched content manager is the most common way in, and it gives no warning.
A website is never finished: it changes with you. What we build we maintain, and if you would rather run it yourself, we leave it documented so that you can.