A. The hosted solution provides a superb and complete website should you prefer not to pay out the full development cost initially. The total monthly payments are simply divided by the initial project development cost, so if your project was 3 days work the cost would be £1440.00 plus VAT. Based on £1440.00 you monthly payment would be either £120.00 per month plus VAT over 12 months, or £60.00 plus VAT over 24 months. Your monthly web hosting, dependant on the hosting package chosen is then added to this figure. Once you come to the end of your contact you then simply switch to a standard web hosted account which is currently avaialble from just £8.25 per month. In addition and to cover the additional cocts involved in offering monthly payments and account for a certain amount if bad debt, there is also a initial one-off fee of 20% of the project cost.
A. The advantages are actually quite substantial and overall MODx is much easier to administer and update that a static website would be. For example, menus are created dynamically so that every time a new page is added to a section, all the existing pages within that section are automatically updated. New articles and news topics that you add will automatically update your home page, providing a summary with an automatic link back to these new topics without you having to do any more than write the original news page.
There are also controls for setting up which users are allowed to update which sections. To make changes to existing pages you do not need anything more than a web browser and internet access. In addition, search functions, email encryption, forms processing and site visitor statistics are all included as standard. And even then, this only covers a small amount of the benefits.
A. The MODx Content Management Software (CMS) does require your web server to have PHP and MySQL installed, but this is usually included with most hosting packages in any event. You do not need to install any software locally on any PC's to maintain and update the website, all you need is a standard web browser. We would also recommend a Linux or Unix web server which is highly reliable and very well suited to running PHP, MySQL and MODx.
Where your website requirements are small and you have to use a server that does not include PHP/MySQL, then static HTML pages may be the right solution for you.
A. MODx, the Content Management Solution we provide is based on Open Source licensing. This means we make no charge for the software itself, we just charge for our added services and time. MODx is extremely powerful, in fact it offers more flexibility and functionality than other commercial CMS solutions that are expensive to purchase and install and in some cases also difficult to manage.
Some people, especially businesses have a hard time understanding the “Open Source” business model and worry that if it’s free it will not last. The concept of “Open Source” is that many highly skilled people contribute to the development (generally tightly controlled), indeed anyone can develop these solutions whoever they like in any direction as the code is always available, but anything added to the core must remain free. What might surprise you is that most “Open Source” software is very reliable. This is because unlike proprietary closed developments “Open Source” solutions can have hundreds or even thousands of users and experts reviewing the code and highlighting any issues. The most popular web server “Apache” is actually Open Source as is Linux, MySQL, PHP and 1000’s of other software products. With such big communities, the need for support, training, documentation and hosting creates many opportunities for “Open Source” vendors to make significant profits also and even some proprietary vendors are now making some of their products “Open Source or Free”, even Microsoft.
A. MODx is very reliable, 1000's of commercial and personal websites built with MODx are running every day, 24 x 7. There are MODx installations that support 1000's of pages so you'll be in very good company and can be very confident, especially when you consider the in-depth Modx and web skills Limesharp can promise you. And as you would expect, this website is built with MODx too.
A. No problem, we can review any template you like and use this as the basis for your new website. In fact using a template from a site such as templatemonster.com will generally result in lowering you overall costs because it takes as least a day, sometimes several to come up with a suitable bespoke graphic design whereas a template can be purchased for around $60.00. Withever route you take, either design is then carefully hand-coded as MODx templates so we only use the graphics and general layout of the template. What is important is to make sure the template is right for your business and will support the website project goals as well as allowing for the correct user interface and navigation layout to be incorporated. Please speak to us first prior to purchasing any web templates.