School Website Providers

[maniac]

Hello all,

 

I have been asked to look at 'modernising' our school website, so I am wondering who other people use for their website development and what you think of them value for money etc. We currently have our site with a company who supply quite a lot of schools websites, but the quotation we have had for moving us onto a more modern looking site is quite high in my opinion, so I am looking for alternative companies I can approach for a comparison quote. I don't want to go down the road of in-house designing/hosting as we simply don't have the necessary skills or time in the Academy to look after this, so it's got to be a hosted solution that is designed for us using a content management system so changes can be made easily and quickly by delegated people to different parts of the site.

 

Any advice appreciated, websites are not really my area of expertise, but naturally it's fallen in my lap to do something about it.

 

Regards,

 

Mike.

[Danp]

I am working with Interactive Schools for a our new one, but given the other topic recently this might be overkill for some schools!

[bossman]

We use a well known guy called @webman who designed and built ours around 4 years ago, we have just recently won "Best education website and media" across the North East,

 

Although @webman did not receive any adulation for this as everything was done by our BM who failed to even acknowledge any of the IT staff but instead praise the PR guy who only works 5 hours per week with the content but then that is another story.

 

When Ofsted came in last year we received an outstanding for the website which again went without any thanks but it seems unless you are a VIP or a member of the SLT or teaching you are not noticed...............transparency being the keyword, which when you look at it we would rather be not noticed than constantly being in the headlines.

@webman now works for a company Cloud Data Service who delivers this type of support so maybe worthwhile getting in touch

 

Welcome to Bishop Barrington School. Bishop Auckland in County Durham. Our site

[snagrat]

Check out eSchools. Will offer more than just a website design

[Joanne]

I went with webanywhere in the end. Good price and easy to use back end.

 

Cherry Fold Community Primary School - Home

[mikeprice]

Just changed ours over to Primary Site - something of an emergency switch but they got the whole thing up in 72 hours and it is a massive improvement over the previous version - and extremly easy to change

 

Very impressed with their service and the end result - but only for Primary I think but may be worth ringing them even if you are not primary

 

Mike

[clockend25]

We used Digital Kitbag - We market your business online to get you more customers - Digital Kitbag recently as a cheap option of putting in place a better looking website until we can afford a proper new design. They design I think six pages, and then hand it over. We've found the CMS to be pretty decent as well.

[Smee]

We had a website, then the boss decided to get it changed and got the SENCO (I don't know why) to do it..........we no longer have a website!

[AdamzB]

We use a well known guy called @webman who designed and built ours around 4 years ago, we have just recently won "Best education website and media" across the North East,

 

Although @webman did not receive any adulation for this as everything was done by our BM who failed to even acknowledge any of the IT staff but instead praise the PR guy who only works 5 hours per week with the content but then that is another story.

 

When Ofsted came in last year we received an outstanding for the website which again went without any thanks but it seems unless you are a VIP or a member of the SLT or teaching you are not noticed...............transparency being the keyword, which when you look at it we would rather be not noticed than constantly being in the headlines.

@webman now works for a company Cloud Data Service who delivers this type of support so maybe worthwhile getting in touch

 

Welcome to Bishop Barrington School. Bishop Auckland in County Durham. Our site

 

Interesting, your Ofsted doesn't state you have an outstanding website.

 

Agree with Primary Site or Web Anywhere

[jtoland]

We built our own with a management backend and then we did one for another school using the same system

[matt40k]

Interesting, your Ofsted doesn't state you have an outstanding website.

 

Where are you looking? Just quickly looked at the latest Ofsted report for the school and...

 

 

[TABLE=width: 409]

 

[TR]

[TD=width: 50%]

Leadership and management

[/TD]

[TD=width: 50%]

Outstanding

[/TD]

 

[/TR]

 

[/TABLE]

 

[TABLE=width: 629]

 

[TR]

[TD]The inspection team observed the school at work and considered documents provided, including: students’ achievements and targets; records of attendance, behaviour and safety; student case studies; minutes of governing body meetings and reports to governors; the school’s self-evaluation and planning; details of monitoring of teaching and learning, staff training and how performance of teachers and leaders is managed; and the school’s website and school policies.

 

[/TD]

 

[/TR]

 

[/TABLE]

 

 

Ofsted | Bishop Barrington School A Sports with Mathematics College

[RichCowell]

The ANME site is with Schudio - School Website Design | App | Wall | Web | VoiceSchool Website Design from Schudio, Lancashire - I was looking for another company to do the school site too, and after using it for a few weeks, and as they transfer all the data/structure over, I went with Schudio for the school site too... all tailored for schools in the back-end, so it's easier for other people to navigate & maintain...

 

Been really impressed with it since we moved...

PM me if you want to know more :-)

[AdamzB]

Saying they viewed documents and the school website is not the same as the school website is outstanding. Under your suggestion any school with Outstanding Leadership and management has an outstanding website. #NotTheSame

[nyiss]

We use School Spider here, it's been easy for the staff to use which cut my work down so I would really recommend them.

[matt40k]

Saying they viewed documents and the school website is not the same as the school website is outstanding. Under your suggestion any school with Outstanding Leadership and management has an outstanding website. #NotTheSame

 

Fine it isn't a standalone part, but part of a larger whole. Find me a school with outstanding that has a pants website. Also you have to remember outstanding is a subjective term - from a technical perspective, school websites in general are pretty poor - https://github.com/matt40k/SchoolsWebsites-England. I've not found 1 that has scored a perfect score.

[VeryPC_Colin_M]

Hi @maniac

 

If you want something a bit funky that captures the spirit of the school like this Home | Harehills Primary School (try and click the rabbit), we’d be happy to help. We made this one for @hallb15.

 

Cheers,

Col

[maniac]

Saying they viewed documents and the school website is not the same as the school website is outstanding. Under your suggestion any school with Outstanding Leadership and management has an outstanding website. #NotTheSame

 

Since when did this place become so bitchy?

 

Bossman is right to be proud of his website, it's very good and it forms part of that judgement.

 

Thanks for all the suggestions people, a few companies to approach there so that's all good.