New website options

[Oaktech]

Right, I suspect this will be one of those questions with no good answer, but I'm going to ask it anyway.

 

We currently have a website built by an e-marketing company who have since fallen out with our Trust, leaving the support of our site in the hands of the capable, but overstretched Trust technicians. We were growing unhappy with the site anyway as developments such as not having to FTP content and link to it in the CMS, new versions of the wysiwyg editor and more template control did not appear as promised (we weren't the only ones). The site is basically handcoded with a few commercial bolt-ons and is not easy to use, hence most updates end up in the lap of IT when they shouldn't need to.

 

I've got a couple of quotes from companies who specialise in sites for schools - the usual suspects - and they all come in around the same price per site with a hosting package added on. The prices I'm being quoted are fairly high and I'm being asked to ensure they're absolutely the best value being that this falling-out is not a budgeted-for change!

 

Enough back story...

 

The question here is...

 

• Do I go with one of the usual suspect bespoke suppliers.
  
• Do I go Wordpress and host it in the cloud
  
• Do I go Wordpress and self host
  
• Do I go Drupal or Joomla and self host.
  

 

 

I've got bandwidth and server capacity in spades, and I've used all of the options before and it's not clear which is the best option, they all have pros and cons!

 

 

Thoughts?

[mavhc]

If you know what you're doing, Wordpress and self host, otherwise Wordpress and cloud host.

 

Do you know what design you want? Or are you looking to hire someone to create something?

[DGardiner]

Wordpress + https://theme.co/pro is amazing every one of our trust websites runs on it

[colly72]

Depends on your level of expertise. I'd never self-host a school website these days, it's not worth the hassle given the relatively cheap hosting plans available with someone like Krystal. Wordpress is a great option if you're comfortable in that environment, you can get great results using themes like Themeco (mentioned in the comments above) or by using a good Theme Builder such as Oxygen (https://oxygenbuilder.com/), or the relatively newly released Breakdance (https://breakdance.com/).

 

All depends on how comfortable you are with the system, developing a theme, managing and maintaining etc but if you know what you're doing there's an opportunity to save a serious amount of cash.

[TechMonkey]

I'd agree with colly72, with everything we have to do, adding tasks such as web host security and patching, ignoring the actual website maintenance, would need to have a very good reason.

[supportman]

Would outsource this personally, having someone do the design and development as well as patching and hosting is worth every penny!

 

We used e4 Education and the website they built for us looks very good. CMS is also nice and easy to use by staff. Also syncs well with our school Office calendar.

[Oaktech]

Would outsource this personally, having someone do the design and development as well as patching and hosting is worth every penny!

 

We used e4 Education and the website they built for us looks very good. CMS is also nice and easy to use by staff. Also syncs well with our school Office calendar.

 

Cheers... I'll add e4 to the list of people to talk to.

[mavhc]

Pick a company that uses Wordpress, then you can take it over without starting from scratch again if they turn useless

[Oaktech]

I'd agree with colly72, with everything we have to do, adding tasks such as web host security and patching, ignoring the actual website maintenance, would need to have a very good reason.

 

I'm already doing that for other self-hosted externally available systems so it's not actually that much of an issue to add another website to the list - the current websites were bought in before we moved from a motley collection of servers and desktop PCs as a back-end to a proper set of HA servers and SAN - we actually host services for other schools.

 

I might want someone to design it for me though.

[FN-GM]

I’m confused as to why the IT department is involved. This would something that lives with marketing. Leave it to them to sort out.

[Oaktech]

I’m confused as to why the IT department is involved. This would something that lives with marketing. Leave it to them to sort out.

 

We're a large Primary... Between myself, the BM & Exec Head, we are the Marketing Dept. For my sins I have a background in graphic design so the 'Any Other Duties As Required' drum gets banged pretty hard around here.

[TwistedHelixis]

If you are a Google School then everything links in really well with Google Sites. Staff can upload files to the website by just adding them to their Google drive and it becomes a learning platform very easily.

[Sonic007]

We ended up paying crazy prices for what was essentially a Wordpress site with a few add-ons. The thing is though, We dont have time to be designing, doing the graphics, photos, etc so if you do have the time.... then do it yourself, but if you want a good site done well and you dont have time then leave it to the proffesionals.

[ITGuyNW]

Our marketing team spent a lot of money on someone who wasn't a web designer by trade just to get a wordpress site with a few add ons.

 

I'm currently looking after the site, maintaining it, adding content after the guy in admin left and it was left to rot.

 

I could do with looking at some of these options above to get it redesigned. I'm happy enough maintaining, adding stuff but haven't the time for a full redesign.

 

Wonder if i'll get a budget...

[mavhc]

It's easy to scam people who don't know what they're asking for.

 

How much is "a lot of money"? £500 should be enough for a theme design and the importing of your basic content, then at most £100/year for hosting

[PotNoodleTech]

Used a company here, I barely have enough time to keep the website up to date let alone spend time designing and building it too.

 

Ideally you would hire a dedicated website & social media person and they can crack on with it themselves, the money saved by not using a company and the money gained by doing a stellar job at just this one role, should offset their wage fairly significantly!

[Delgado]

Google Sites - hands down the best.

[3s-gtech]

I’ve been told our site needs ‘freshening up’. I designed and built it on Joomla, and have maintained it over the course of nearly 15 years (with re-designs and themes built over the years). It works really well, but isn’t jazzy enough it seems.

 

I made it clear that it is the very best I can do (with the flexibility and power that comes with Joomla) so I’ve said they’re welcome to find me a school website they like more, and I’ll contact the builder. I don’t have the skills to match a pro. This would obviously come at significant cost.

 

Silence since.

 

I do wonder how important it is for the school website to be a image-heavy modern scrollathon in parental engagement and pupil numbers.

[mavhc]

Unless you're a private school, you're not really advertising with a website

[FN-GM]

We're a large Primary... Between myself, the BM & Exec Head, we are the Marketing Dept. For my sins I have a background in graphic design so the 'Any Other Duties As Required' drum gets banged pretty hard around here.

 

Fairs do. In this day in age with all the security issues sometimes it might be best left to the professionals.

[FN-GM]

Unless you're a private school, you're not really advertising with a website

 

I would agree with this.

 

In the days of social media, communication apps etc I also found that people didn’t really use the website anymore. You don’t even need it to lookup the address of phone number. Google does that for you!

 

It just seemed to be there for Ofsted compliance.

[ITGuyNW]

We're looking to move hosts, is Krystal still a good recommendation? Any others?

[webman]

Yes, Krystal are still a great option I host around 15-20 sites with them and wouldn't go anywhere else.