Moving Our Website To A External Company & Advice

[Fontayne56]

Hi Guys and Girls,

 

We are looking to update our website. We currently host it in house and it needs a refresh. We haven't got the time to do it.

 

We are looking at two hosting and design companies Cleverbox or Green House Websites.

 

Before we spend loads of money going down a route I wondered if anyone has any experience they would like to share with these companies.

 

Also what questions should i be asking?

 

Many Thanks

[Norphy]

Ours are hosted by Greenhouse School Websites. I wasn't involved in the selection or design process but I've had to contact their support a few times for things like DNS changes and certificate issues and they've generally been helpful.

 

PM me if you want a URL for our site.

[djm968]

We use a local independent Website designer and host our sites with GoDaddy. This gives us professionally designed websites and control over the hosting platform to manage things like SSL and DNS etc.

[hardtailstar]

Ours are hosted by Greenhouse School Websites. I wasn't involved in the selection or design process but I've had to contact their support a few times for things like DNS changes and certificate issues and they've generally been helpful.

 

PM me if you want a URL for our site.

 

Same. Although I dont like our school's website with them but that is only my personal taste.

 

All the design was done by the lead IT Teacher and GreenHouse but they have been helpful.

[MatthewL]

If you do move keep control of the DNS yourself and just update the relevant records. If it was me personally I would get them to design and you sort hosting out too but then that's just me wanting to keep control of what I can but it still allows them to do their bit.

[john]

One question if they are managing the whole process is around patching / backup.

 

I am fairly sure they will use a CMS and Plug-ins they will need regular patching to ensure they don't get hacked, this can sometimes give rise to re-coding to make plug-ins work again etc (not always but sometimes). Will they have backups in the event it all goes badly wrong? Restore time? What about load testing / balancing if you use it for Snow Day messages and you have 100's of hits at 7am and its on server with other clients they have perhaps will it reach a limit / fail?

 

If you have any forms / data collection on your site you should also consider GDPR concerns / checks and ensure that you have satisfied them

 

This should all be in the contract you sign not just an email as if say the CMS is owned and data is stolen which is covered by GDPR, the ICO will be after you but if your contractual terms are right you can then drag them into this along with you.

[JATSO]

We use https://smartschoolwebsites.co.uk/ and https://www.itchyrobot.co.uk/.

 

Domains are registered by us but they host as part of the package.

[Jcx500]

Quite happy with our Greenhouse website and the support has been very useful and helpful at times , pm me if you want to have a look at my website