Question for all you IT boys (and girls)...

[SBD]

A chum is looking to set up a web business (don't worry no .com illusions), he has had a site designer spec up a decent site (approx 6.5k) one of the options is for him learn to do his own maintenance and if taken designers have suggested it would require him to purchase and get up to speed on Dreamweaver. I'm totaly IT ignorant but I think I remember seeing comments that Dweaver is a little long in the tooth.

Please could those who do know do me the honour of passing comment (as opposed to wind which is my speciality).

TIA

[davidd]

It depends on what the maintenance is, how the site has been created etc, etc. There are companies who offer very simple content management solutions where most of the site can be updated without the need to learn anything. How complex is the site?
If he wants another quote to compare then tell him to mail myself of Bonce or Gtir (look their profiles up in PH) with details we have a very simple system we use which allows users to do their own updates, mail me offline for more info.

Cheers

David

[russ_brooke]

If you friend is willing to spend a little time (and that's all he'll need!) You'll find Dreamweaver is great. I'm an ex-Web developer and i used Dreamweaver which is probably the best and easiest WYSIWYG editor available (WYSIWYG - What you see is what you get!).

>> Edited by russ_brooke on Friday 28th June 11:17

[hughjayteens]

For £6.5k it should be something pretty special - Feel free to give him my email addy and I'll advise where possible - That does seem quite a lot of cash.

Chris@ Respect-IT.co.uk without the space

[Neil Menzies]

Depending on the function of the site, we could do something for him... www.prosumersolutions.com

(Sorry for the plug Ted)

(BTW our software is behind the Black Circles (tyres) web site as seen on Pistonheads!)

[Roop]

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[SBD]

Good stuff. Many thanks for taking the time peeps, will pass all this on.

[Ministry]

I have to agree with Hugh 6,500 seems a hell of a lot of money. I am not sure how big the site needs to be or how many pages he has in it, but sorry to say, it sounds like someone is taking him to the cleaners. Is it just a static website or is it a transactional based system? For example are people buying things through the site, needing a secure server, credit card checking system and backend DB? The IT market is in such turmoil at the moment he would be wise to shop around. There will be some excellent developers on the market who would do the job for 1/2 the price and just as good.

On the Dreamweaver front, I have six guys working for us who use it and it is the prefered package on the market to date. However, if he has no previous experience in coding HTML it is not that easy to get the hang of. If he wants to really just use it for an updating/editing tool then it will take him 1/2 a day to learn that side of it, if he wants to do a bit more than that, it will take him longer. Other useful tools are NetObjects Fusion or MX. These are good as well. Tell him to avoid MS Office FrontPage, any true developer will tell you just how much it sucks .

Hope this helps.

>> Edited by Ministry on Friday 28th June 12:50

[ap_smith]

6,500 is not a great deal of money, depending on what's included in the price! If you get all the graphical design, brand treatment included with a functional (with some kind of basic interaction) type website - then it's not a great deal at all. Maybe I've been working with blue chip clients too much recently?

You should ask you friend to consider what support comes in the price.

As for maintaining his own code, well it depends what technologies have been/are going to be used to write the site. If it's flat HTML then yes, it should be easy to maintain/update. If more scrpt based technologies are used, ASP, JSP etc. then it will not be so easy. It all depends how accustomed your friend is to delving into code?

Any good site, if created correctly, can be maintained through admin screens. For example, if you have a discussion board like pistonheads, you could create admin screens to delete abusive messages, users (like CarZee) etc. If you wanted to add a news article to the home page, this could also be done through admin screens. This adds to the cost of the initial site build, but saves hassle and time(=cost) in the long run. It's how all the commercial sites I've managed have been built.

[Neil Menzies]

ap_smith "6,500 is not a great deal of money"

Ministry "6,500 seems a hell of a lot of money"

hughjayteens "For £6.5k it should be something pretty special"

There's no such thing as a standard web site. You need to define what you want the site to do - the more interactivity, and the more content, and the more dynamic, i.e. changing content, the more expensive it will be - and if so, you need to factor in maintenance strategy too. If you want half a dozen static pages, Dreamweaver is fine... and £6.5k is expensive. If you want to reproduce ft.com, its a snip

[M@H]

6.5k is not a great deal.. depends on the web content.. I charge our our guys at about £7-800 a day so its not that much..

Cheers
Matt.

[SBD]

AFAIK the site is required to hold large numbers of pictures and details, although reasonably static I think the amount of data it will be required to hold and filter/process means quite a lot of server space. There is an SMS facility built in as one of the USP's. The price includes branding, artwork/graphics/logos and marketing assistance.

I've been through the spec. sheet with him my gut feeling tells me that he isn't being taken for a ride, he did shop around as well and was getting some silly stuff like 11k.

Still it's money for old rope this IT malarky isn't it?

OK OK I'm gettin' me coat.....

Seriously though thanks to all for the advice.

[ninja_eli]

I'd agree with ap smith, in that there should be an "editing page" which can be used for uploading and changing details etc. This will be especially useful if the details are being stored on a database as you will otherwise need to replicate the db, amend and then upload again, which for a big db can be hassle and even unbearable if using a dial up.

Our website was done by me and a friend of my dad's, who I only agreed to allow him to do it as a favour for my dad. He wanted to make the website dynamic and use asp. In my opinion certain parts of the site do not need to be database driven, and asp is slow compared to other dynamic systems. I don't think he is as knowledge as he (and I) first thought and it turned out to be a major favour and I am going to change some of the site again once I get my books out and regain my knowledge :d

Dreamweaver is brilliant but decide on which one as Ultradev does the dynamic stuff easily. Its not as easy to change parts of the website unless you have a copy of it running locally on your machine using the same connection properties etc (i.e. DSN etc). Otherwise you could end up with unexpected results.

It does depend on what you mean by "maintain" as if parts of the site are needed to be changed then you may need Dreamweaver. If you mean to change the content of the site (eg pictures, news stories etc) then the method ap smith suggests is the most efficient and user friendly way to go, which the developer should do for you as part of the cost.

And 6.5K does some a little on the high side(?) I personally would expect a nicely done dynamic website using other than ASP (PHP seems quicker to me but then maybe I am just talking crap?), together with an e commerce site. Maybe with loads of well designed Flash content.

Regards

Just my (non IT) ten pesetas worth.

[M@H]

If you want an e-commerce site you can do worse than a copy of Actinic Catalog.. builds the whole site for you and includes all the payment and order handling stuff too....

just IMO.. (I use it)

Cheers
Matt.

[ninja_eli]

Is Actinic Catalog better than Drumbeat 2000 ecommerce? I didn't know how to build the ecommerce site before and that is partially the reason why I accepted to let my dad's friend work on the site.

Also, how much does it cost?

Thanks and regards

[PetrolTed]

Am I missing something here? How can anyway say £6.5K is too much/too little without knowing what the requirements were?

Not to say that there hasn't been some useful commentary here.

[M@H]

quote:
Is Actinic Catalog better than Drumbeat 2000 ecommerce? I didn't know how to build the ecommerce site before and that is partially the reason why I accepted to let my dad's friend work on the site.

Also, how much does it cost?

Thanks and regards

Actinics about £5-600 from what I remember... I bought it a couple of years ago... I had a look at drumbeat before 2000 and it seemed a bit tecchie/slow going.. Actinic is for Noddy's upwards: you just build your catalog of products, pick a theme, tell it where to put it, and it generates a complete site for you... If your technical you can mess about with the html template files and other source code, but if you aren't is doesn't matter..

[philshort]

quote:Am I missing something here? How can anyway say £6.5K is too much/too little without knowing what the requirements were?

Absolutely! Sounds like a few "professionals" may not be quite as professional as they like to think!

And I wouldn't be slagging off Dreamweaver either, in its MX incarnation it looks set to become the Windows of the web world - IMHO of course. This is a killer app - unless you're not into n-tier web delivered applications ... but yes it does still to static pages as well. And no I don't work for MacroMedia.