New Website - wordpress, Joomla or something else?

[mdrabble]

New Deputy Headteacher wants a new website as our current website which I redesigned 5 years ago using WordPress is not "Pretty" enough and needs to be our "Shop Window" so we can "Sell" the school are the phrases he used.

 

He had taken upon himself to get companies in to give demos and provide quotes for a new website without evening asking me first to see if I can redo the site (which I redid 5 years ago on the cheap due to money being used as the excuse last time) - and is still being used now - but amazingly they can find money for a website costing upwards of £4k. During the demos - which I was invited to with 2 days notice when I found out about him wanting a new website - and the Head is merrily going along with it - he even used the same phrases to them!!

 

So do I stand back - let them do what they want, spend money which they say they don't have and or do I ask them - have you actually looked at that can be done in house before spending money which SLT insist we don't have, I will look at a redesign the current school website will start from scratch in terms of themes, content - the lot.

 

 

For school which host/design their own sites - what backend systems do you use - and how do you ensure they are kept secure?

 

CHeers

[Mako]

As someone who did our school website 7+ years ago for free, because I had some spare time as a technician and thought I'd get some major kudos, I'd say stand back.

 

I don't have the time or the inclination to delve into overhauling the website, it's not in my job description to be a web developer - only to maintain the site - and as it's unlikely you'll get proper remuneration. I spat my dummy out and said I'm not doing it and they'll need to get it done properly. And so for years it's fallen further into obsolescence.

 

I'm all for saving schools money but when it's your own sweat involved, going "above and beyond" without additional payment to save what is essentially a drop in the ocean isn't worth it.

 

Just my 2p. Of course, if you actually enjoy it and want to take it on then that's your decision, just make sure you get what's owed.

[simpsonj]

I'd stand well back. Nothing worse than website design by committee:

"Can you move that down a centimetre?"

"That's not quite the right shade of blue, can you change it?"

"Actually, we'd like to completely change the layout, that won't take long to sort will it?"

 

But if that's not an option, then we've used Joomla successfully for over 10 years. I didn't do the initial setup, but I've managed to keep it ticking over with little to no web design ability!

[mavhc]

Everyone uses wordpress now. If your website already exists then don't need a new website, you need a new template and a few design changes. Say you'll do it for only £2000.

 

Max cost should be £300 as the website already exists.

 

There's always money available, question is what do people want to spend it on.

[ultima170387]

I'd use this as an opportunity to step back from it also. I did 7 years ago when ours was outsourced to a professional company. In all honesty it was for the best especially with the ever changing web standards, responsive layouts etc.

[Ditto]

I'd go with the advice of stand back. I can however fully share the feeling the £4k could be better spent at this particular time in schools.

[Danp]

Not often I'd say this, but step away, been there too. Get away while you have a chance. Maybe offer to support it going forward, but let someone else deal with the committee of changes during build.

 

£4k is about right for an external company to provide a website for a school. Not that I would sign off that amount though!

[mdrabble]

Thanks for all the replies - think standing back is probably the best thing on this occasion.

[3s-gtech]

I still remain stuck-in with ours - I have learned a massive amount after 14 years of Joomla administration, going from old static themes to our current responsive setup (which has had too much committee design, but that tends to get ‘trimmed’). I have enjoyed doing it for the most part, and it’s something I’m quite proud of.

 

If you want it to stay updated and fresh and you’d like to stick at it, let them know. You can use what you have, re-theme, and really expand.

 

Otherwise, I’d step back and make it clear that the work to refresh it in future does not drop back to you - if they want a third party managed website now, it’ll need to stay that way.

 

So often what SLT actually want it content, and they have decide what that is and commission or produce it. That gets forgotten, and you end up with a shiny new site full of image sliders, banners and placeholders. But no-one can find the prospectus.

[dhicks]

New Deputy Headteacher wants a new website as our current website which I redesigned 5 years ago using WordPress is not "Pretty" enough and needs to be our "Shop Window" so we can "Sell" the school are the phrases he used.

 

As already noted, £4,000 is pretty average for a well-presented website for marketing purposes - someone with all the resources to be able to provide good photography and graphics and deal with fiddling around with formatting reqeusts.

 

If you do want to do the website yourself, I recommend using a static site generator. I run a site that uses Hugo to convert Markdown into a website using the Gov.uk style template - it's rather more text / information heavy than your average school marketing page, although it should also meet most accesibility standards. Content is held in Google Drive, which the end users can edit via Word or Google Docs, which does make for very accesible content management.

Edited November 10, 2020 by dhicks

[localzuk]

When we were a single school still, I redid our website twice, it got redone by the head's PA, then they paid someone to redo it externally. The result was the same every time. The design was fine. It looked good and did the job. But the content was always out of date, so we'd get comments about how the website was bad. Hence the constant redesigns.

 

Since being a MAT, we've paid a company to do all our sites. We also have someone in the Trust who keeps them up to date. I don't touch them at all.

 

My advice, if you can get rid of looking after it, do it. It isn't IT. It is marketing, and someone doing marketing should be dealing with it.

[justjay]

I took this challenge on 3 years ago as our previous website was awful.

It really depends on how much time and effort you want to put in to it, myself, I loved it and still do to this day.

 

I don't use any sort of CMS, purely HTML, CSS and JavaScript coding using Dreamweaver, graphics on Photoshop and hosting done through Azure.

 

Like I said though, it depends on the time you have. Not just building, but also maintaining. I built it within the 6 weeks holidays, along with all the policies etc, maintaining these days can be 10 mins a day to several hours depending on the content that needs creating.

 

You could start off by playing around with one of the templates of Themeforest, go from there.

[Richie8410]

Come up with a plan and present that if you can. I was a Web developer for an FE college for 10 years. I now work as a Web developer for a commercial company. (Probably similar to the ones that came to do your demos). Honestly, the head probably just wants a quick turn around and something "flashy flashy" to show off. The problem is, once you commission a commercial company to so your website, and they'll almost definitely go WordPress, and rightly so. It's the best tool for this sort of job. They'll customise it heavily. You'll then end up in an almost endless loop of paying them hourly or daily rates for changes, tweaks etc. And definitely avoid any company that wants to build you a fully custom theme. There are so many great managed themes out there that can be customised to your needs, especially in the later versions of WordPress using the block editor etc. Truth is, return on investment for a school already struggling won't happen if you go with an agency development. It'll be money down the pan. Propose they invest in strengthening your team and build it yourself using a decent theme that's managed and updated constantly alongside WordPress standards. Where required maybe ask for a day or two's consultancy to get you going if you need it. But yeah, even though I now work for one of those companies, if I was still working on the college I would take that approach any day! Good luck mate. Let me know if you need any help.

[mdrabble]

They ended up going to external company - as they felt I had too much on to redesign the current site - which is fair enough as I do have a fair bit of work on.

 

Instead I, new deputy who is driving this, the head and myself are the ones who are on the “design” committee, had a meeting with external company and basically I sat there in silence as deputy went through what he likes and the head agreed.

 

I’m now sitting back and letting them get on with it - on the plus side I will have even less to do with it as the plans for to allow certain staff to edit different areas of the new website.

[Norphy]

If you feel put out by this, it’s understandable. You’ve been looking after the website for a long time and it’s being taken off your hands. Probably without so much as a thanks or a what do you think. It’s hard not to see this as a slight.

 

However, going by my experience under similar circumstances, you may find this to be a blessing. You’re going to have a fairly major piece of work taken off your hands and, to be honest, one that possibly shouldn’t really be your responsibility anyway. Looking after a website is a job for a marketing person, not a technical one.

 

Look on the bright side: When someone asks you to do something with it it, you can legitimately say ‘Sorry, not my system any more’ and send them on their way. Wash your hands of it, let your DH take the thing on and have more time to do productive things.

[mavhc]

the plans for to allow certain staff to edit different areas of the new website.

 

Haha, good joke.

[Richie8410]

They ended up going to external company - as they felt I had too much on to redesign the current site - which is fair enough as I do have a fair bit of work on.

 

Instead I, new deputy who is driving this, the head and myself are the ones who are on the “design” committee, had a meeting with external company and basically I sat there in silence as deputy went through what he likes and the head agreed.

 

I’m now sitting back and letting them get on with it - on the plus side I will have even less to do with it as the plans for to allow certain staff to edit different areas of the new website.

 

Fair enough. If you do have a lot of work on yourself then it does make sense. It's a shame though, a lot of schools and colleges would be in a better financial position if they gave guys like you the support and resources you needed to do the tasks. Short termism, sadly.

[Richie8410]

Haha, good joke.

 

[emoji23] kind of agree. That'll be interesting. Good luck, dude.

[Guest ZFarnworth]

Squarespace, I use the basic monthly plan. But for what you get out of it it’s good enough for what I’m doing.

[Guest ZFarnworth]

Squarespace, I use the basic monthly plan. But for what you get out of it it’s good enough for what I’m doing.

 

Just realised this is a year old topic [emoji23]

[denjo]

it depends on your needs, I prefer wordpress

[Erikamadrizo]

I used wordfence for security of my website and Réalisation site web suisse for secure hosting so that I do not have any security threads.

[Brax]

I recommend Greenhouse School Websites. Excellent CMS. Can be a bit buggy at times but if you ever run into issues the support team usually reply pretty quick within a few hours. And you can designate a member of staff as an editor for specific pages.

[junz]

If your looking for a Wordpress site Education Space is definitely someone I would recommend. Great prices, great support and they are a non-profit that solely help schools.

[FN-GM]

So do I stand back

 

Yes. Website isn’t an IT task - in the real world this is covered by marketing. Unless you’re the Marketing person in the school your only involvement should be updating DNS records.