Does freedom mean “unlimited options?” Or does it mean, “the security to do great work with peace of mind?”

For some developers, freedom might mean, say, the ability to hop on a live server and “cowboy code” a fix. But that kind of freedom might actually keep an agency from delivering the highest-quality service to their clients. For web development agencies, a solid set of best practices can be more freeing than a less restrictive, but more chaotic, approach.

Chris McEvoy is Executive Editor at National Review, a bi-monthly magazine with significant daily digital content. In this guest blog post, he discusses National Review's migration to Pantheon. 

Under-resourced web teams forced to mend legacy technology with limited tools are often frustrated because of the numerous low-impact, yet time-consuming tasks that bog down productivity. If your IT team is overwhelmed, it will impact their ability to succeed with their mission and ultimately, this will affect your entire organization.

Unrivaled speed, uptime, and scalability make Pantheon’s high-performance platform the best place for WordPress hosting. And it just got better. Pantheon is offering the popular Object Cache Pro plugin to all customers with a Performance Small or larger plan for free of charge as part of an Early Access (EA) program. 

Sometimes I hear Drupal and WordPress agencies say something to the effect of “That’s not my decision to make” or “I don’t have an opinion” when their clients are making important technology purchasing decisions such as evaluating a website platform like Pantheon.

There are some cases where it can be important for a consultant to abstain (a conflict of interest, for example) but it almost always benefits everyone when agencies form and share clear opinions with their clients.

Here’s why:

As a Drupal architect I’ve been building web applications for clients for years, starting with sales, working through the technical architecture, and all the way through to the final touches. I build web applications for projects of varied sizes—some have only a couple of stakeholders (like the CTO and CMO), and others touch dozens of departments across an organization, all with varied technical ability.