I thought I would just share a bit about how we think the web development process should work - from when a client submits a brief to the site being handed over (and beyond). We are calling this the Halogy Ethos because it forms the basis of why we built Halogy.
A web design agency love being able to design a site, hand it over to the client and keep it looking how they designed it. Unfortunately though this rarely happens because of the amount of control that web design agencies give to their clients in the CMS.
A designer might provide the website looking great, and when it is time for the client to change the content of the site a couple of months later it will end up looking much different because the client might not know how to design websites and they would rather have pink text on a yellow background, or they might accidently knock something out of line because they aren't sure how to use the CMS which is understandable.
Disclaimer - This is not always the case and we do have a lot of clients who would make great web designers and the alterations they make to their site through the CMS often end up looking lovely.
When this happens it's written off by the web design agency as 'oh well - that's life in the web world, deal with it and move on' - but we believe it doesn't have to be this way.
In Halogy a designer can build the site as per brief, define which regions are editable in the templates, set up a custom permission group which gives the client access only to the bits they need to edit (not the stylesheets or the design), and then give the client their login.
What also happens often in the web development process is the web design agency will just hand over the site to the client with all the master usernames and passwords and then leave them to do it on their own, but again we believe it shouldn't be like this.
In Halogy we charge a monthly fee which covers not only the license of the software but also time spent with the client helping them with their site. If they need a new template or a new colour scheme we can often include this in the monthly maintenance fee. We won't just leave a client with all the master passwords and wave goodbye.
This is the way we believe that web sites should be built and maintained - it forms the Halogy ethos: Let the designers and developers stay in control of the bits they are best at (the look, feel and templates), let the content managers stay in control of the bits they are best at (the copy), charge monthly and support the client ongoing.
