What is onboarding?
by Victor Seager
Onboarding a Magento website with outer/edge is designed to be a seamless, stress-free process that ensures your site is in the best hands right from the start. Here’s how we approach bringing new customers into our expert ecosystem:
What is "Onboarding" Anyway?
When you hear "onboarding," it’s more than just a handover of your website—it’s the foundation of our partnership. At outer/edge, we’ve built an advanced development, staging, and deployment infrastructure to keep things smooth, efficient, and fully transparent. We like to think of this as one of our many secret weapons, but we’re happy to share some key elements of our onboarding process with you.
Git Version Control
We begin by migrating your website's code to our Git platform, a version control system that tracks every change. This ensures that multiple tasks can be handled simultaneously without conflicts.
Plus, tied in with our deployment system, we can quickly roll back to previous versions if needed—making updates a breeze.
Development and staging platforms
Once the site is in Git, we set it up on our development and staging platforms. These platforms allow our developers to create fresh copies of your website to work on individual tasks.
For each task, you'll also have access to a unique staging site with its own URL, so you can test changes in isolation before approving them. If you've got 10 ongoing tasks, you'll have 10 separate staging sites.
Magento Security Patches
No matter which version of Magento you're using, we’ll ensure that all security patches are up to date, keeping your site secure from vulnerabilities.
Coding Standards & Modules
We're super fussy here about code quality. Our team runs detailed scans of your codebase to identify outdated practices or static analysis coding failures. Some issues are fixed immediately, while others are scheduled for future updates. We maintain these standards through every change we make to your site.
We'll also ensure that all third-party modules are installed correctly via Composer. We often find that previous developers didn't install Magento modules correctly, leaving missing dependencies and outdated code.
Performance and caching
Checking that Varnish, Redis etc are all set up correctly is integral to our onboarding process, ensuring checking for and rectifying uncached pages. We also keep an eye out for potential performance improvements, some quick fixes may be applied immediately whilst others are logged for future implementation.
Deployment system
Our advanced deployment system ensures that any changes we make are pushed live with zero downtime. This guarantees that your customers experience seamless transitions, even when we're working on major updates.
Logging
We set up remote log monitoring to keep an eye on any errors that may arise. If we spot recurring issues, we’ll address them proactively, ensuring that your website runs smoothly at all times.
Feedback
Once we’ve completed onboarding and become familiar with your site, we’ll provide a summary of our findings. This usually includes suggestions for further optimization, removal of unused code or modules, and even SEO opportunities to help your site perform its best.
At outer/edge, we’re confident that our onboarding process sets us apart from other Magento agencies. Our infrastructure, focus on transparency, and obsession with coding standards ensure that your website is in expert hands from day one. We look forward to working with you and maintaining a long-term, truly personal relationship!
