An online presence may need the employment of a webmaster to handle tasks like website upkeep and error detection. Support is what you need in this situation. However, what if you occasionally require assistance in expanding your website? Is working with a team of developers the best solution for you? To assist you in making an informed decision about which of these options is right for you, it is our responsibility to explain them to you.
The upkeep of a website
After a website goes online, the work continues in a new phase. To keep a website well-maintained, a number of chores must be completed on a regular basis.
The page's performance
A person or team in charge of managing a website monitors its performance to ensure that it runs properly and loads rapidly. It contains, for example, the following checks:
In addition to misleading site visitors, broken links hurt the page's search engine rankings.
Updates
Make sure that the content management system and all of its add-ons have been updated as part of keeping a website up to date It ensures the availability of new features, bug fixes, and security enhancements. In addition, regular vulnerability checks and backups of the website are essential.
Be sure to check back on a regular basis to see if the appearance and features of the website have been updated. As the needs of any organisation change, new features and graphical aspects may need to be introduced or reworked.
There are maintenance and development operations that may be required to keep your website healthy. Does a team of developers or a support staff make more sense in this situation?
Our Drupal support team consists of developers, testers, a project manager, a DevOps engineer, and a designer. There are a few developers who may change their shifts depending on their personal schedules. It has no effect on the quality of our work because we scrupulously document everything.
It's our job to keep an eye on your Drupal site at all times. They are quick to reply in the event of an issue or malfunction. The support team is not bound by two-week SCRUM sprints employed by the developers if you have an urgent bug report to report. They utilise a project management system called Redmine to track every customer concern and adhere to a set of guidelines.
They place a high value on both security and upgrading. New releases of Drupal core and its modules provide new features and fixes. Keeping up with the most recent changes is essential, for this reason. In spite of the complexity of some modifications, our staff is well-versed in anticipating needs and putting them into action efficiently.
Other things we can do
Besides keeping an eye on the website's performance and functioning, our support team is also responsible for some small development. Low-effort jobs include, for example, creating a new landing page or integrating a new system.
When is it appropriate to use a service such as this?
An excellent option for those who lack the resources to construct their own website but still need help maintaining it and making minor tweaks. If money is a concern, you can commit to a fixed amount of development time each month with this method (such as 40 hours).
A team of developers, on hand
This group is in charge of building the website. As well as completing tasks, they give recommendations for improvement and contribute to the development of long-term objectives. They are also responsible for A/B testing and user experience design. Customers can use this tool to see which website piece performs best.
Sprints are typically two-week work cycles for our web engineers, who use the SCRUM methodology. We accomplish lesser tasks as we work our way toward our ultimate goal during each work session (such as developing a new feature). Because of this, developers and testers may accomplish their responsibilities in just a few hours. It's possible for the customer to see exactly how much work remains to be done, allowing him or her to maintain track of the project's development over time.
Hiring a development team at the right time is critical
When you have a dedicated development team working on your project, you'll be able to bring in fresh ideas and define the long-term goals of your website. It's possible to get the job done in a short amount of time but at a higher cost because the team members are working on the project full-time. It is possible, however, to tailor this service to your specific needs at any given time. The number of developers on the team can be increased at times and decreased at other times.
Which service is the best for you to use?
Before making a choice, consider your needs. Consider the following as a guide.
Amount of work to be done
The total amount of development tasks that need to be completed makes a huge difference. With a backlog of 500 hours or more of work to be completed by the professionals, you may need to employ a development team.
Deadline
The speed at which you can make changes to the website is likely to be a concern if they must be finished by a certain date and time (e.g. before some important conference). A full-time staff of developers will be necessary.
Pay per hour. It's more expensive per hour to hire a support staff member than it is to hire a developer.
Work to be performed. Support is a good option if you simply need minor tweaks to your website on a regular basis.
Replacing an existing service
Once you've selected a service, you can't go back and change your mind. For example, you chose to work with three of our developers on a complex feature for your Drupal website for three months. Then you prefer to focus on regular maintenance and occasional improvements. After that, you'll be able to collaborate with a team of programmers and finally a support staff.
It's also possible that it's the opposite way around. When you were searching for a person to handle your website, you came across our company (monitor its performance). After some time, you had an idea for a feature that might be used in many different ways. This is an instance when we may be able to switch your support service from a single person to a group of developers. Once the new functionality is released, you'll be able to go back into maintenance mode.
Our aspirations in terms of providing support for Drupal
The following are the key objectives of Code Enigma’s Drupal service team:
Always keep your website up and running
It's not uncommon for our clients' businesses to be dependent on the availability of their websites. Apps that we support are critical to our clients' companies. System outages are the primary cause of customer complaints, lost revenue, and other undesirable results.
Keeping the websites working smoothly is the major focus of our support team, which response quickly to any issues that arise.
Ensure the security of your website
Regular security updates for Drupal's core and modules are made available. The same holds true for the technology stacks that power Drupal. Our technical support team is in charge of making sure that all of our websites are secure and up to date at all times.
Every time a new Drupal security update is made available, hundreds of websites are forced to do the same. Keep our optimised procedures and workflows up-to-date with our support staff.
Pay a small charge for a small amount of development work
After the initial stages of production, some websites don't require a full-time development crew. Though, at some point, all websites require maintenance. It may be a new landing page, a new integration, or even a bug fix or problem-solving. It could be anything.
If the development effort isn't too large, our support team can perform these tasks. A new feature will be scheduled and assigned to one of our Drupal development teams if additional work is required.
How is support provided?
We place a high value on automation. To save our users time and deliver the most consistent results, all of our websites adhere to the same set of guidelines.
Automated testing
A website we take over for support through an onboarding process that makes it easier to operate in the future. The following documents are generated as part of the onboarding procedure:
Docker-based development environment resembling as closely as possible the production environment.
An automated testing environment that can be accessed by the customer (a test website). For the purpose of inspection by our clients before it is deployed to production, this area serves as our staging area. In addition to testing and training, clients can utilise this for their own purposes. We have the ability to make as many copies of the website as necessary if the need arises.
Duplicating a live website in a development or testing environment in a computerised fashion. In order to deploy new code, we can simply click a button and have the latest version of the production website copied over.
The ability to rapidly and consistently publish new modifications into production via an automated deployment technique
To test deployment and also to demonstrate to the client, we can quickly (within a few minutes) copy a production website to development, check a problem, and write a patch for it. Any time a proposed modification is approved, it can be immediately deployed to production.
The process of requesting support from us
Some of our clients choose to communicate with us via email or our chat system. Mattermost, despite our efforts to urge them to use Redmine. We record every request in Redmine, no matter how it's communicated. At this point, the request takes on a life of its own. The ticket will be booked and held for an ad hoc response based on the severity, urgency, and kind of request received from the client.
We have an excellent client relationship manager who's available for a service review when you need it, too. This gives us the opportunity to go over how we're doing and you can tell us about any upcoming projects.