Category: Arts
“Your website will be shut down in 48 hours.”
A few days before New Year’s Day, the Communications Director of the League of American Orchestras received a surprise notification like the above. But thousands of of the organization’s members relied on the website every day to access resources and answer questions about orchestra management. What to do?
Luckily, a colleague introduced the League and BFC, and the threatening email made its way to us. After accessing the hosting account, we were able to determine what the issue was: the website was running on an old version of Joomla, and an upcoming upgrade of the server’s software would make the CMS incompatible with the hosting environment.
It took about a day for BFC to back-up the site, find a different (still compatible) server, and migrate the site to it temporarily. Then, we upgraded the CMS to the most recent version and moved it back to the original host.
Downtime was avoided, and the organization’s membership never knew. And from such humble beginnings grew a wonderful relationship between organization and our web agency. Since 2017, the League has relied on us for support and maintenance for the League’s web properties. We keep the main site (now running on WordPress) updated — so that heart attacks like the one that began our relationship don’t happen again. The League knows it has a trusted partner to help with bug fixes, including tweaks to the complex Salesforce integration that gives membership access to a private area of its website.
As long as there is server access, there is hope. In this case, we got in, made a copy, and moved the site within a day. The League has relied on us for support ever since.
The relationship has let the League make strides in other areas, as well. For instance, with its quarterly magazine, Symphony.
The League’s thousands of members depend on the robust articles, information, and listings available in the magazine. But producing a physical periodical is expensive. The organization knew that if it could move the magazine online, it could save tremendously on design, printing, and shipping costs.
So, we designed and built a beautiful online version of the magazine that’s even better than the physical version. With the launch of Symphony.org, the organization’s membership can get the organization’s content more easily, with access to more evocative content like photos, videos, and embedded sound. Now, the League publishes a better magazine for less cost, and can use the savings to further its mission.