Seven years ago, in the infancy of One Firefly’s web offerings, the award-winning Mercury Collection was born. The first of its kind, the Mercury Collection is a Joomla-based set of mobile responsive design models that enable home technology and commercial systems contractors to quickly and easily achieve a professionally branded website that is optimized for SEO and lead generation.

After nearly seven wonderful years, it is with a nostalgic heart that One Firefly has officially decided to sunset our Mercury Collection. What does this mean, and how does this impact your existing Mercury Website? Read on to learn more.

What Does The Term Sunset Mean?

Similar to when a technology brand retires a product, sunsetting is a similar concept. As of February 1st, 2021, our team will no longer be promoting or selling Mercury Collection websites. While all good things must come to an end, our team is even more excited to continue to recommend our newly launched Mercury Pro website solution.

Why Now?

The Mercury Collection has helped hundreds of integrators worldwide market their businesses in a professional, attractive and informative fashion. However, technology years are similar to dog years - in a single year's time, we see 5-7 years worth of technological advancements and improvements. While the Mercury Collection is still relevant in SEO standards and mobile responsiveness, there are countless more flexible frameworks available for development. Exciting features of these new frameworks (such as what is used in One Firefly's Mercury Pro product) include:

• Advanced front-end editing capabilities.
• More options for customization/market uniqueness.
• The capacity to store and stream video.

Is My Website Vulnerable?

Outside of One Firefly’s decision to officially retire the product, the infrastructure on which the Mercury Collection was built is nearing the end of its lifespan. In a recent announcement from the market leader for Joomla themes and extensions, it was declared that this framework (which has been around since 2013) would have no new improvements released in the future. However, they did clarify that while no new features will be available, security updates will continue to happen for the foreseeable future - meaning that your existing Mercury website is absolutely safe and secure for at least the near term.

What Next?

This announcement should not be interpreted as telling you that you must get a new website in 2021. In reality, we estimate that the framework will continue to be supported with security patches for a minimum of 12 months. However, it may be time to start thinking about budgeting for a new website in the future. In fact, Orbit Media claims that the average lifespan of a website is 2.66 years, or two years and seven months (although it is our goal at One Firefly to develop website solutions that keep up with the everchanging web landscape - and often have lifespans of 3-5 years+). 

If you have any questions about your current website or need help discussing budgets for a new site, feel free to contact our team. We are here to help you grow.