I know this isn't quite B-Ts normal field of expertise but I'm sure someone will be able to help anyway: I'm currently looking to update a website and was looking for some advice on pricing and best ways to proceed etc. It's for a small college student union/JCR and as an overview of what I need it's just a simple website for storing mainly textual information, along with photos etc. The key factor though is that it needs to be simple to update the content, as the people doing that change each year. I'm therefore looking at something along the lines of Drupal. First of all, is that a sensible approach? I've messed around a bit with it and it seems straightforward enough, and seems popular. The main issue though is that I don't have the time (or skills probably) to initially build the website to any decent standard. It's probably easiest to get it done professionally - I have no idea how much this might potentially cost though. As this is just in early stages all I am looking for is a ballpark figure to decide if this is feasible - I don't need hosting, just the site itself. So, does anyone have any idea how much this could cost? Many thanks EDIT: I know this is slightly out of the normal area for bit-tech, so if you can't help directly, but could point to a place that could (please don't say google, I don't really want to google this ), that would be great. Thanks
Is there any reason why you have overlooked wordpress? This makes it much easier and more straightforward to get an alright professional looking website up on the web. At least, in my experience. Drupal is good, but it is quite expensive hiring a drupal professional. I work in a shared workspace, which apart from our IT Consultancy, is mostly web freelancers etc. For the most part, the lower tier of people seem to charge about £35 an hour, with a day rate (this is a guess because I have never actually asked someone's day rate, but I do frequently get "hours" of work off the freelancers) at about £250. Realistically - I couldnt tell you how much work would be required for what you are looking for. one of My boss' is a web developer too, but his work is toward the opposite end of the scale, his hourly rate is about £80 an hour, with days about £600. If you are going to spend money on it - you might end up spending an absolute bomb. Which is why I think you should look into wordpress initially. Do you have any hosting or a web server? or do you need to consider this as well?
Thanks for the help. There is no reason at all I have overlooked wordpress, I'm not sure why I didn't think of it to be honest. I'll look into that as well. I was worried it might be a bomb, however we have our own server on-site running the current website so I don't need hosting. I'd also populate it myself, so "all" I need is the framework to be put together. Thanks again, at the moment its just research so I'll have a mess around with wordpress and see what I think.
the problem with drupal vs wordpress, that has only just become obvious to me this second - is wordpress has a fantastic cms built in already - if you wanted this done in drupal, with an easy to use cms, im fairly sure someone would have to write you (or buy and out the box like red dot) cms for you to use, which adds another cost to it. what is your webserver running? Is just a basic LAMP server? (Linux Apache Mysql and PHP)
Wordpress is by far the best option for a user friendly CMS. I recently made a sideways step in my career from .net web development to using PHP and other technologies, so have had a bit more exposure to wordpress and I love it. The clients we deal with love the wordpress back end, as so get much more use from their sites and update regularly. There are plenty of development companies around who specialise in Wordpress sites. But without jumping straight into that have you thought about a self hosted wordpress with a premium (or nice free) theme? As Margo Baggins asked, if you have a server or hosting that you can install wordpress on I see no reason not to at least give it a go yourself. Edit: Free, decent looking themes. I have used a couple of these myself for past projects so I am more than willing to show you how to remove little bits like "free themes from X" in the footers etc. At work the designers create themes from a completely blank template and then any extra functionality gets added by the devs so my experience from skinning in personal projects to using the real power of wordpress through work.
Sorry I've taken a while to reply, work has really got the better of me and I can't really make this very substantial. It is a LAMP server, yes, though I'm probably going to do a wipe when the new website goes up, it's just got incredibly cluttered from past people... Thanks Matticus, seems like Wordpress will be the best way to go. Add to that the higher ups have decided I will have very little money and its almost certainly the best option. Again, sorry for the brevity, and thanks both of you.
Yes wordpress is far better than drupal. It would not be wise to invest so much money just to start a project which does not guarantee 100% success.
wordpress isnt so much better than drupal, its just better for this application. Problem with drupal is it has quite long development paths to get something that you could do quite easily in wordpress.
I have a Wordpress Site hosted by Go daddy and really like the CMS. It's pretty simple to use and posting content is a doddle. Just need to post more content as I have been negligent of late.
Hang on, Drupal *is* a content management system - you don't have to develop or buy anything else to get an "easy to use CMS". The input methods/editors may be a little less fancy than Wordpress by default, but that's easily fixed with free add-on modules. I've been using it on and off for a few years now and I've never had to write my own code or install additional software just to make it functional or easy to use. I do use a lot of additional modules, but there are plug-in modules available for Wordpress too. What, exactly, do you mean by a "CMS"? To be honest, if you're talking about static pages and not blog-style content, I'd argue that Drupal is better; I've found it far easier to manage static page content with Drupal than with Wordpress. The out-of-box experience may be a little better with Wordpress but that doesn't necessarily make it better than Drupal for this task. Before this turns into a war between various CMS platforms, I'd say: try both. Try more than just these, in fact. If you have full access to the server (shell access or physical access) then there's no harm in trying a few things out to see what works for you - you can always wipe everything and start again. Or install each one into a different subdirectory in the www root directory (e.g., www.example.com/drupaltest/, www.example.com/wordpresstest/, www.example.com/insertcmsnamehere/)
I did not know that.. So i stand corrected (im glad i used words like "fairly sure" now to save a little bit of face haha) cms = content management system I have NEVER used drupal, i just work amongst drupal professionals. All my pages are wordpress - but i'm no web developer. thanks for pointing that out though, everyday is a school day
