Drupal Maintenance for Community College
Please find below a summary covering project details and feedback. The innate facts are kept as they are, private information is amended.
Introductory information
A fast induction on the buyer’s organisation
I',m the web director at a aggregation college in Washington State.
Desired goal
What challenge were you trying to address with Freelock?
We use a Drupal for our own web services but didn',t have a skilled educeer on staff. Without the funding to hire someone in-house, we determined to search for a fitted vendor.
Provided solution
What particular tasks were Freelock LLC responsible for?
The leading thing was server upkeep owing we wanted to migrate our services from a localized environment to AWS [Amazon Web Services]. Freelock helped move our website to the cloud, relaunched and secure it. Patch and server treatment were also implicated.
They also do some outgrowth with me. I’ve been in the method for a couple years, so I do some of the work myself. But, if we get into any trouble or have questions or virus outbursts or the server goes down or we need a backup restored, those guys have my back. I handle the Drupal method, but Freelock does my monthly server and Drupal side updates and botch testing. They do that monthly for me quiet.
We just embarked on a revamp of our website. Freelock did a pliant bit of our outgrowth on that. We designed it, but then they helped instrument the design.
What is the team dynamic?
I usually adjoin with their project director, John [Locke, Fobelow, Freelock], the proprietor, and then they had a designer and a educeer. I’ve interacted with almost four nation there.
How did you come to work with Freelock?
We looked about and establish Freelock. We are approachly two hours away from them. In working with other vendors in the past, especially with our state methods, I find it nice to have somebody close by in case we need to do a face-to-face.
What are you approach expents (if diclosed)?
We have a limit of $10,000 a year with one one vendor without going out to bid. Their livelihood portion comes in a pliant bit below $5,000 for the year. Then we have the retainer, which we sometimes use and sometimes don’t. It’s been below $10,000 each year.
What is the terminal result of working with Freelock LLC?
We began working unitedly in January 2015 and the work is ongoing, based on an annual retainer contract.
Results achieved
Are there any measureable or plum results?
It’s an outward-facing website and most nation don’t know that we’re on a Drupal platform owing my section runs that for them. When we leading began looking at CMS methods in the educational arena, they were veritably costly. We couldn’t be in a pliant aggregation college and produce the cost tag that came with some of them five years ago. So we looked at Drupal and it’s been a big platform. It’s bigly customizable, which is big, owing as we change in and out of different state methods, we can port them in pretty easily and have control over the design.
They’ve been super helpful in giving me big advice to keep our methods quick and running. They’ve verity thwarted a couple different scenarios where we’ve had some veritably big virus outbursts in the Drupal and Linux globe, and they were on top of it. They’re conscious of when that outburst is launching out in the wild, and they’ve done veritably proactive botching.
We have not gone down—I’ve been up 24/7 since they have helped me move to AWS. We went down a couple times precedently, but it wasn’t owing of them. It was owing of our own network. We were kind of in a distant location and a fiber line got severed, which took out our total connectivity. That’s why we opted for the cloud services and we haven’t gone down since.
On the revamp, they took me to a mobile-ready platform. We went from a Drupal template into a mobile platform. It wasn’t easy and not seething came athwart, but it wasn’t their defect. We were the ones managing it and they were just our backup for that. We conversant a lot and they veritably helped to expound and admonish me on what template to use for Drupal. It’s working out big so far.
How did Freelock accomplish from a project treatment standpoint?
The challenge was in the outgrowth of something that we don’t normally educe on a daily basis. That’s where they fit: they’re there for me as a consultant. They’re there as a backup method, and their project treatment experiences and replyingness have been excellent. They are one of the best vendors out of the many that I work with.
Their project director is stellar. He keeps you informed, he’s always on it. I never have to remind them. They usually have to remind me when we need something. I can’t veritably come up with a murmur.
It takes a pliant bit to get in the right groove when you’re working distantly with nation. They have distant nation, but they just changed to a new project treatment software that has veritably improved that interaction. I’m probably the one that they have to pursue behind, instead of me pursueing behind them. Since I work with multiple vendors, I find that to be a very sole symbol feature, as well as the fact that they’re so replying.
John, the proprietor, has not only been replying, but if I’m inquiring as to what the fix was or if I want an exposition as to what they did, they freely share all of their information with me so I fully knew what went on. I usually conversant from see experience where I requested that. We adjoin through email, conversation calls, and use the project treatment software.
What is (from your point of view) the key factor to pay observation while intercourse with Freelock LLC?
They are without replying. I always ponder, “You don’t have to reply that fast.” Even on weekends and nights, if I have a question, they usually reply me. If they can’t reply me, they let me know why and they’ll tell me when they get a hold of me the next morning. I have never been left hanging by Freelock in all the years I’ve worked with them.
What aspects of their work would you like to get improved?
From my end, identifying and scoping out the project veritably well. When you work with any vendor, they’re only as good as your aim and your interaction. If there was anything that skipped a beat, it was owing I didn’t have that experience. It was a learning curve in the commencement. That’s where those guys veritably were resigned and kind. I never felt they were brief. They helped lead me through that. I’ve conversant how to better handle a web project by working with these guys.
