Wordpress stepping stones
SCIP has been down the DreamWeaver route for many years, but right now I think wordpress is the best short and medium term solution. I'm now looking at the progression route for an organisation starting without a website and would welcome views on what I'm thinking of:
1. Brand new org or never built a website before:
- wordpress hosted site to learn basics of posting stories, creating static pages, working with images, sharing tasks within a group, editorial issues, etc
- build test site to learn basics then rebuild launch site
- budget = 20 hours training + zero for website + 20 hours for group to launch site
2. Second generation site
- hosting wordpress on your own server [ie paying for hosting]
- want specific look and feel not available in word-press hosted themes, or functionality only available in specific widgets
- this requires some degree of expertise in managing and updating the site software, plus a decent host familiar with wordpress
- budget = 10 hours training + £100 pa hosting + 20 hours for group to re-launch site
3. Third generation site
- take control of the code on a self-hosted site
- buy in or learn CSS skills and other wordpress-related magic, eg to integrate site fully with a database, calendar, map, whatever
- budget = ? hours training [eg CSS] + £100 pa hosting + 40 hours for group to re-launch site
4. Moving on
- depending on the size of the organisation and its needs it may be necessary to move onto drupal, or some similar CMS, which will probably mean buying in much more expertise and support
- by this time the org should be muchy better at specifying and administering an appropriate solution, and therefore pay less and get more for their money.
- budget = ? £3k for group to pay agency
Any thoughts based on your experience?
I also wonder whether this model holds for small businesses?
Flickr/brightonmarkie
Facebook/Mark Walker
Twitter/scipmark
YouTube/scipmark
Last.fm/scipmark
Del.icio.us/scipmark
GMail/Mark Walker
4 comments:
Hi Mark
Have you considered using free click-to-build services such as weebly.com and webnode.com?
I love Tumblr as a starter website. It's simple, elegant and encourages posting different types of content.
Hi Tom/Rosie
thanks for these pointers - I haven't looked at any of those you mentioned, but will now
bit late to change tack for next week's training but may be useful as I start to work with the group over the coming months
thanks
Mark
Mark, I think that your approach sounds sensible.
I often find it useful to start clients off initially with a decent looking pre-made WordPress theme, and let them get stuck in and inspired with organising their information and get going with blogging, without getting too caught up in the details and costs of a custom-made design.
As a second-step, I'd offer them step-by-step design improvements on a pre-made theme (e.g. tweaking the colour scheme, the font-styling, plus some of the layout).
We'd only suggest a custom-made theme if they have the enthusiasm to work through the design decision-making process, are clear on (or want to work through) the information architecture of the site in advance, and have the budget to warrant it all - even if they start off the conversation by saying "we want a new website and we want it to look like this...".
Post a Comment