Okna Ilver - MODX Evolution Site, Redesign and Long-Term Support

Challenge

Okna Ilver sells and installs windows, and the whole business runs through the site. It was built on MODX Evolution, a CMS old enough that most of what the client wanted fell outside what the platform does out of the box. The home page had aged past the point of doing its job, and the site needed someone on it continuously rather than in one-off bursts.

Options Considered

1. Rebuild on a modern CMS, rejected. The site works and ranks; a migration puts all of that at risk for a benefit the client was not asking for.
2. Change nothing but the content, rejected. The home page was the actual problem, and content edits alone would not fix it.
3. Keep MODX Evolution and extend it: chosen. Redesign the page that mattered, add what the platform lacks as PHP customisations, and stay on the project long-term.

Decision

Treat the site as something to be kept alive rather than replaced. The redesign was scoped to the home page, where it changes the most for the least risk, and everything the client asked for beyond the CMS's own capabilities was written as PHP on top of MODX Evolution.

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aA🔒okna-ilver.ru/

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MODX Evolution site - scrollable browser preview

Brand Design and Template

The corporate design came first: a home page and an inner page for plastic windows. The mockups were then laid out as a template and installed on MODX Evolution.

Home page and the plastic windows page, as designed

Implementation

The home page was redesigned and rebuilt. Around it went a long series of PHP customisations against MODX Evolution, each one covering something the CMS does not do by itself. Alongside the code, the work included running the site's content and keeping the whole thing maintained rather than handing it over and leaving.

Yandex.Metrica Walkthrough

Part of the support work was making the client independent of me for the questions they ask most often. This is the walkthrough on reading visitor data in Yandex.Metrica.

Outcome

The site stayed on its original platform and kept working, with a home page that presents the business again and a set of customisations that let it do what the client needs. The client reads their own traffic without asking anyone.