How To Deal with Your Web Developer Closing Down Over the weekend, well-known and long established Gold Coast web development agency, Graphics Online sadly went into liquidation. Having operated from Southport on Qld’s Gold Coast for just on 20 years, this web company was rumoured to be in trouble some time ago. All finally came to a crunch on the 12 February when it went into the hands of receivers Worrells.
The saddest part of all this is the list of a rumoured 400 clients now left wondering what will happen to them and their websites. For many, if not most of these businesses, they rely on the website for generating business leads and marketing their products and services. The real issue for most of these is that their websites were built with Graphics Online’s proprietary CMS platform, GOCMS.
To add further to the woes of their customers is the fact that their websites are currently hosted by a number of different ISP hosting suppliers. The liquidators have communicated that there are three that people need to contact. Our own research has shown that in fact many clients are hosted with other suppliers.
Past customers of Graphics Online need to determine who is hosting their website and who is paying for that hosting. If it is Graphics Online then we are lead to believe that the existing hosting services could be cut off in as little as 2 weeks’ time.
A number of web agencies on the Coast are currently, as we ourselves are doing, contacting the customers of Graphics Online, offering assistance to them to ensure that these businesses minimise the impact of the situation and to work with them to put in place alternative arrangements.We all empathise with the business owners and the state of confusion and frustration many would be going through.
Because most of the customers were using the GOCMS for maintaining their websites and databases, the solution being offered by some agencies to copy the sites over to new hosting is only a stopgap measure. This will at least ensure the web site code is transferred to another host and with some modification to the code, the simpler sites will continue to operate.
The main issue is that they will more than likely not be delivered under a new CMS allowing customers to maintain their data. To restore this sort of functionality normally takes considerable work and effort to transfer a website with its back end databases across to another CMS platform.
Top Left Designs are able to offer a solution to Graphics Online customers whereby we can in fact transfer your sight into our CMS platform, Adobe Business Catalyst, and fully restore CMS functionality. For simpler sites (those not having back-end databases such as in eCommerce sites) we can in fact achieve this within 1 working day not only transferring your site to a fully functional CMS platform but also setting up your email accounts plus much more.
Adobe Systems deliver the Business Catalyst platform from the cloud with over 750,000 Partners and developers around the world. The solution is hosted on Australian servers and your website is delivered as a turnkey solution complete with hosting, CMS, email, email marketing plus a range of value-add features all included in your system.
If you are a Graphics Online customer, Top Left Designs can help you out with a range of solutions that will ensure your business continues online with minimal disruption. Just call us now and we can quickly assess your exposure and describe the options available that will not only keep your site online but also allow you to continue to operate, as you need it to.
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Written by: Greg Tomkins
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