i need to build a simple website for one of our offshoots at work. it really just needs to be a couple of pages (home & case studies), but look professional & allow customisation.

got quoted nearly a grand by our usual web designers so thinking of ways to cut costs as it’s not our main website and will probably not be used that much anyway – we just need a presence.

i was thinking along the lines of setting up a blog space and customising it but having some issues with wordpress.com (to do with the server we use apparently) so looking at alternatives.

has anyone done anything similar & can recommend a cheap & easy to use/customise service?

it would need to be a hosting service as well, probably up to around £300 p/a including purchasing the domain.

got quoted nearly a grand by our usual web designers

That sounds very fair if you are asking a professional business to create a professional website.

But yes there are cheaper options – as I am sure there are cheaper options for whatever products/services your company offers 😉

You could set up a cheap WordPress or Drupal site on godaddy, or use google sites for free. But really a grand is very cheap for a set up and designed site. If you want to do it for free then Google sites is probably easiest to set up

yeah i wasn’t complaining about the price, i have comissioned numerous websites for my organisation and know what these things cost. we’re an NHS organisation though & i’m trying to cut costs. so if a blog-type service can do a professional enough job (as i say – it’s just a presence that is needed & not likely to get thousands of hits) then i can potentially cut hundreds of pounds…which is surely good!

just wanted a few options really – will check out drupal & google sites, ta!

any more i should be looking at??

probably up to around £300 p/a including purchasing the domain.

well thats a quite a lot to spend on hosting a two page website, after 3 years £1000 on getting one designed will start to look like rather good value to me

I’ve recently had a quick look at Concrete5 – as an alternative to WordPress for a basic site I need to build. I am quite impressed, but not used it in anger yet. For a non-techies the “edit in place” option is appealing.

Whilst I agree with the comments that £1000 is a good price I completely understand where you are at. Concrete5 is I think free, and you then just need some cheap hosting. Which for a low traffic site, including domain name registration should be well under £100. The only real dilemma is if your own time costs money.

I’ve recently had a quick look at Concrete5 – as an alternative to WordPress for a basic site I need to build. I am quite impressed, but not used it in anger yet. For a non-techies the “edit in place” option is appealing.

Of course, it being an NHS site, you will have to ensure it meets NHS brand guidelines as well as WC3 (Strict) guidelines for accessibility 😉

I use wix for a lot of mates sites. You can get something up in 10 minutes. I just then get a cheap domain name package from 1&1 and point the domain name to the wix site job done. One of my mates I did recently can be seen here

Whoops wrong link, this one here

got quoted nearly a grand by our usual web designers

That’s very cheap – As a web developer I’m stunned by how some people think everything on the net is cheap and easy to produce, without having the slightest bit of knowledge of what goes on under the hood.

Typical day rate for a freelance developer/contractor is between £250 – 300.

Amen prezet.

And seeing as it *is* an NHS site, the code needs to be top quality and no shortcuts so there is comfortably a few days work in there – especially as it will need to integrate with a CMS such as WordPress or Drupal to allow the customisation the OP requires.

Concrete5 seems to be getting a bit of interest recently. As an alternative you could also look at Silverstripe.

WordPress is more than enough for most brochureware sites – and can be extended easily enough. The code that underpins it though isn’t to my taste though. Could do with being re-written taking an OO approach. I do like it’s actions / filters though as a way of plugging into the core.

Drupal

*shudder* 😉

I’m stunned by how some people think everything on the net is cheap and easy to produce,

I’m stunned by how no-one ever wants anything complicated.

“Just a couple of pages, nothing fancy. We’ll only need some contact details and a few photographs. You can take photographs, right? Just that, and a new logo, maybe a Flash intro, and our stock catalogue with all our prices. Oh, and one of those buttons that let people buy stuff. And our CEO wants an animated dancing dog on every page. Should only take you a couple of minutes, I’d do it myself but I’ve got a meeting to go to.”

I’ve been in IT since before the web existed, and I’ve never yet heard anyone say “I’d like a website designing and building, and I’m afraid it’ll be a really complicated one.”

I’ve just created a WordPress blog – just for the fun of it – and was curious as to what issue you had with it. Just being nosey really 🙂

“Just a couple of pages, nothing fancy. We’ll only need some contact details and a few photographs. You can take photographs, right? Just that, and a new logo, maybe a Flash intro, and our stock catalogue with all our prices. Oh, and one of those buttons that let people buy stuff. And our CEO wants an animated dancing dog on every page. Should only take you a couple of minutes, I’d do it myself but I’ve got a meeting to go to.”

I’ve been in IT since before the web existed, and I’ve never yet heard anyone say “I’d like a website designing and building, and I’m afraid it’ll be a really complicated one.”
8)

Then the client says ‘how much?’ ‘Freelance X says he will do it for half that’.

Well then, do one and get them to do it for you and stop wasting my time you muppet.

I’ve just created a WordPress blog – just for the fun of it – and was curious as to what issue you had with it. Just being nosey really

WordPress is fine from an ‘users’ perspective, the admin area is nicely designed and implemented.

It’s just all the server side code (PHP) that goes on under the hood. It’s full of depreciated functions that all live in seemingly random locations. I’m sure devs who work with it on a more regular basis understand why it’s structured the way it is – but it feels fragmented to me.

Most of the code works in a procedural manner, as opposed to an object orientated approach. But I think that comes from the constant development that the CMS has undergone.

It’d be nice if the WordPress team stopped at version 3.x.x, and rewrote it from the ground up using PHP5 and object orientated code for WordPress 4. But it’d be a massive job – so I doubt they will – they’ll continue to build on what they already have.

If you need a designer, I can put you in touch with one.

Does it as a side business (he’s a designer by trade too) for a bit of extra wedge 🙂

http://www.davidvesty.co.uk/

Portfolio : http://www.flickr.com/photos/9505279@N04/

Cougar,

Have you been spying on my meetings? Think yourself lucky you didn’t take the contract, because the CEO who showed no real interest in the project during the spec, but agreed to it anyway will then turn up at a design review meeting tell everyone they’ve got the whole thing wrong and they’ve misunderstood the spec.

I sat in a meeting where the designer tried to get some understanding of the “brand” and the CEO told him he was making it all too complicated and I just want a “simple clean site, its not really about brand, we want to communicate with the customer not sell them product!”; a month later with the almost finished product in front of us I then found myself trying to crawl under the table as the CEO told him “its a bit basic isn’t it? for what we are paying i’d expect some design input, something to make us stand out from the crowd, and its not ‘salesy’ enough!”.

However I have to say you web developers are guilty of making stuff too complex. 3-4 days of a designer should easily produce the sort of spec that the OP was talking about… especially since most of the time you don’t write any content. Off the shelf shared server, set up word press, pick starting point template, make cup of coffee, tweak template, have lunch, cut-n-paste the client provided content, and you still have 1/2 a week left to tweak it and make client specific changes. But no, whilst wordpress or a dozen other CMS packages would do the job, it seems 1/2 the people want to do it in some bespoke/custom solution… and charge me for “development time”. FFS I can do this myself, so I know how easy it could be.

FFS I can do this myself, so I know how easy it could be.

Judging by your post, a hack kiddie. Nice work.

People spend years specialising in this field – then quote accordingly for their expertise to do a ‘professional’ job. Sure, the OP could go to a hack kiddie like yourself. But as soon as he asks for something that WordPress doesn’t do natively – I imagine you start looking for the nearest plugin. Hack a bit of the WordPress core (which then breaks the entire site when he automatically updates), and hey presto.

Then you go and attempt to bring the whole market down to a ‘it should be cheap’ mentality.

The answer to

I can do this myself

is, of course, “off you go, then.”

Any old mug could sell a client a ‘wordpress’ site.

The problem is when the client wants is customised to fit their requirements.

The “experienced website developer” now looks like an idiot, because they have no idea how to develop in PHP.

We develop and sell e-commerce systems amongst other software. I know only too well that customers demand the best for next-to-nothing. “I want all the stuff that Amazon does and I want it next week and I’ll pay no more than £100 a month for it”.

I’d love to know how much Amazon spend on r and d.

😯

Nevermind R&D, I’d like to know how much they spend on hardware.

How many servers in the EC2? 10,000? 30,000? 100,000?

Crazy amount!