BMC Website Transition and Support Project Request for Quotations: Questions and Answers

Size: px

Start display at page:

Download "BMC Website Transition and Support Project Request for Quotations: Questions and Answers"

Augustine Morrison
8 years ago
Views:

1 BMC Website Transition and Support Project Request for Quotations: Questions and Answers 1. Do you have a budget in mind or can you provide us with the budget spent on the development of the current site? Our budget for this project is still under consideration and will be informed by the proposals we receive. 2. I see that Joomla CMS is being requested to be upgraded. Will you consider another CMS system integrated into the site? At this point, we are not looking for a complete site redesign, but to find new hosting and upgrade our site to the current version of Joomla, so we are not interested in moving our site to another CMS in the immediate future. 3. How much new design and content changes will be done during this migration? We do not intend to undertake a substantial redesign as part of the RFQ. We are planning to leave the current site design and architecture in place for the immediate future. 4. What does the traffic on look like? Daily/monthly pageviews would be most helpful if you have access to this information. Using Google Analytics, so far in 2012 we ve averaged about 12,000 pageviews/month, 395 pageviews/day. 5. Would it be possible for you to provide temporary administrator/super administrator login details for us to review the scope of the data and extensions needing to be migrated to Joomla 2.5? (i.e. administrator credentials for logging in at ) We can provide login credentials for a duplicate version of our website. If you think these would help you in providing an accurate RFQ, please contact us for a username and password. (aswackhamer@baltometro.org / (410) ) 6. Can BMC provide a listing of name, date, version and author for the Joomla components, modules, plug-ins and templates that are enabled on the current Joomla site? 1500 Whetstone Way, Suite 300, Baltimore, MD, Phone: Fax:

Our budget for this project is still under consideration and will be informed by the proposals we receive. 2. I see that Joomla CMS is being requested to be upgraded.

2 The modules listed in our installation include: Logged in Users Popular Recent added Articles Menu Stats Footer Unread Messages Online Users Quick Icons Login Admin Menu User Status Admin SubMenu Title Toolbar Using an account mentioned in Question 5, you can look in detail at the modules in a copy of our Joomla installation. 7. Is there a percentage DBE goal or requirement for non-dbe firms? The agency s goal for using the services of Disadvantaged Business Enterprises (DBEs) is 25%, but it is a goal, not a requirement. Additional consideration may be given to firms meeting the DBE goal or for inclusion of DBE participants. 8. Will the BMC consider quotations made by firms utilizing strategic offshore development partners for portions of the project? Yes. 9. How many points of contact will your service provider have with your organization? To whom would the service provider report? There will be one primary contact and a couple of secondary contacts. We will provide contact information to the selected company. 10. A network lookup of the IP address associated with your domain's record shows that your site is likely hosted by a company based out of Toronto. Do you have internal IT staff that manages your hosting environment with this vendor, is your hosting managed entirely by the vendor, or perhaps a little of both? Baltimore Metropolitan Council Page 2

The agency s goal for using the services of Disadvantaged Business Enterprises (DBEs) is 25%, but it is a goal, not a requirement.

3 Our hosting company has completely handled things such as server setup and installation and maintenance of our content management system. 11. Is your website hosted on a shared hosting account, a virtual private server, a dedicated server, cloud solution, or on more of a complex hosting solution with multiple servers, load balancers, firewall, etc.? We are currently using a shared hosting environment. It does use multiple servers, and does not make use of a firewall or load balancer. Our host uses a "cold" standby server, with a recent backup from the previous night. 12. In the RFQ there is no mention of hosting, and your DNS is pointed elsewhere for , so is it safe to assume the hosting provider will not be providing hosting as part of this contact? Correct, no hosting is needed as a part of this contract. 13. What is your current traffic on baltometro.org? What is your percentage growth in website traffic year-over-year? Do you have plans to scale your hosting infrastructure to meet future growth as necessary? Google Analytics reports about 4,000 visits/month to our site over the past several months. Our site traffic has been relatively stable. Actually, traffic for FY2012 (58,591 visits) was down 14% over FY2011 (68,448 visits). We don t anticipate a rapid growth in site traffic that would necessitate immediate plans to scale our hosting infrastructure. 14. What are your goals in choosing a new hosting provider for baltometro.org? We are looking for a host with consistent uptime who can provide us with timely assistance in dealing with problems, and who will handle our server security. Ideally, the company will also have the capacity to provide some technical support for our content management system as needed. 15. How do you hope that your new hosting, development, and maintenance provider will better serve your organization? Our current hosting company is dissolving and we need to switch hosting providers. 16. How do you hope upgrading to Joomla 2.5 will better serve your organization? We would like to move our site to a currently maintained version of the software. According to the Joomla website and other sources, support for security issues for Joomla 1.5 will be ending in the very near future. Baltimore Metropolitan Council Page 3

firewall, etc.? We are currently using a shared hosting environment. It does use multiple servers, and does not make use of a firewall or load balancer.

4 17. Do you already have a timeline in place specifically for completing the Joomla upgrade? How soon would you like the upgrade to Joomla 2.5 to be completed? We don t have a specific timeline for upgrading the site to Joomla 2.5. Moving our site to new web hosting needs to be complete by the end of The Joomla upgrade can be done simultaneously. 18. According to Google's index of baltometro.org, there are about 13,200 results found on your website. How much of your website content will need to be upgraded to Joomla 2.5? If not all of the content, please describe which sections/categories/articles will not need to be included in the upgraded site. What is the total number of articles to be included in the update? We are currently planning to move all our content to Joomla 2.5. Our Joomla installation shows 1,467 articles. 19. Do you currently work with a provider to maintain your website on an ongoing basis, do you currently maintain the website in-house, or perhaps a little bit of both? We work with a provider who has maintained the technical aspects of our website. We manage the content in-house. 20. How many in-house contributors do you have that write/develop content for your website? There are about 20 staff members who are responsible for some site content. However, only a handful of people actually update the website. 21. Can you please describe your current workflow, from start to finish, for developing content and publishing it to the website? Numerous aspects of our website are in flux. A new staff member who now serves as the primary webmaster started a couple of months ago, and once we find new hosting we will probably reevaluate the web content workflow. 22. Can you please describe how you envision a provider working with you to improve the workflow you have described and/or what part(s) of your workflow do you hope your website maintenance provider to assist you with? We had not envisioned the hosting provider being very involved in our content workflow, but more the technical aspects of running our website. Baltimore Metropolitan Council Page 4

According to Google's index of baltometro.org, there are about 13,200 results found on your website. How much of your website content will need to be upgraded to Joomla 2.5?

5 23. Would the BMC prefer to have maintenance services provided on retainer or on an ongoing hourly basis? We would prefer an annual retainer. 24. How frequently would you say new content is published to baltometro.org? Pages are edited and documents are added to the site several times a week. Most of the new content added is information about events, meeting agendas and notes, and documents released by the BMC. Baltimore Metropolitan Council Page 5

Pages are edited and documents are added to the site several times a week.

Questions and Answers for Scott County Requisition No. 19108 Scott County Drupal Setup and Website Redesign

Questions and Answers for Scott County Requisition No. 19108 Scott County Drupal Setup and Website Redesign Can the entire Project of Drupal Implementation & On-Call Support activities ALL be performed