I know this is rather a 'how long is a piece of string' sort of question but I've got to start somewhere.
My wife runs a small college and they want to tart up their web site and add some interactive ability to take money for distance learning courses etc. They are particularly short of money at the moment because of the major down-turns in spending on youth work. The improvements in the web site are part of the strategy to bring more and different students on board to keep the college's finances on an even keel.
As far as I can see with a quick glance there's around 50 pages on the site though maybe more as the pageid parameter runs up to just over 100 when you browse round the site.
The main requirement is to make the site more interesting to look at rather than to fundamentally change its layout and design. The thought is probably to use soemthing like WordPress to create the site and to pay for someone whose major function will be to make the site attractive.
So - what sort of money are we talking about? Hundreds of pounds, thousands of pounds, whatever? The existing site maintainers are asking for the college to pay for a 'web site audit' before they do anything more which seems a bit of a cheek because they ought to know about the site already.
Any/all ideas etc. would be very welcome.
On 12/02/2014 10:54, Chris Green wrote: [SNIP]
The main requirement is to make the site more interesting to look at rather than to fundamentally change its layout and design. The thought is probably to use soemthing like WordPress to create the site and to pay for someone whose major function will be to make the site attractive.
[SNIP]
Wordpress is a fantastic tool, and designed for exactly this. There are hundreds and hundreds of free themes, and most are easily changed via "child-themes". An hour or two playing around would probably give you something to work on which would cover their immediate needs.
A specialist theme writer could do this for reasonable money. Buying the book "Smashing Wordpress 4th Ed" would be a good start for someone who fancied a crack at it.
Cheers, Laurie.
On Wed, 12 Feb 2014 11:36:02 +0000 Laurie Brown laurie@brownowl.com allegedly wrote:
On 12/02/2014 10:54, Chris Green wrote: [SNIP]
The main requirement is to make the site more interesting to look at rather than to fundamentally change its layout and design. The thought is probably to use soemthing like WordPress to create the site and to pay for someone whose major function will be to make the site attractive.
[SNIP]
Wordpress is a fantastic tool, and designed for exactly this. There are hundreds and hundreds of free themes, and most are easily changed via "child-themes". An hour or two playing around would probably give you something to work on which would cover their immediate needs.
Plus 1 for wordpress. I have used it for years. It is easy for even a relative novice to build and maintain a site using the base package with one or two plugins and a free theme (and the range of plugins is huge).
If the school cannot find anyone internally to do a new build, then paying a small local company is an option. As for pricing, I know a a Norfolk Parish Council paid in the region of a few hundred pounds for theirs. I think any more than that would be unreasonable.
Hosting could be cheap too. Many large ISPs offer wordpress based hosting for peanuts. I'd be wary of staying with a company that wanted to "audit" its own design, unless of course what they are actually offering is a new design consultancy.
Mick ---------------------------------------------------------------------
Mick Morgan gpg fingerprint: FC23 3338 F664 5E66 876B 72C0 0A1F E60B 5BAD D312 http://baldric.net
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+1 for Wordpress, I use it quite a lot, it's stable, updates smoothly to new versions, and has loads of plugins to extend it if needed.
Also (and separately) look at Moodle to see if it offers anything useful for delivery of online courses, if that would be appropriate. It's not something I've ever used myself but it seems to be well used and well regarded.
On Wed, Feb 12, 2014 at 05:13:17PM +0000, Mark Rogers wrote:
+1 for Wordpress, I use it quite a lot, it's stable, updates smoothly to new versions, and has loads of plugins to extend it if needed.
Also (and separately) look at Moodle to see if it offers anything useful for delivery of online courses, if that would be appropriate. It's not something I've ever used myself but it seems to be well used and well regarded.
They already use Moodle. :-)
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Chris Green -
Laurie Brown -
Mark Rogers -
mick