crc-ict Posted January 19, 2007 Posted January 19, 2007 One of my headteachers has mentioned to me about renewing the school website. They have asked me to estimate how long (i.e number of hours work) it will take me to build them a new site from scratch. Although the design is not decided yet, it appears that it will be fairly content rich and updatable, but I'm not envisaging anything too fancy, or involving much in the way of coding or a CMS. It'll most likely have to be done in Frontpage. The problem I have is putting a number of hours on it! We need to decide to work out if it is an affordable project before doing too much planning but it seems difficult to work out before its planned! Anyone care to share any ideas or experiences about how long it took them to build a new site from scratch? I'd be sooo grateful for any thoughts...
CyberNerd Posted January 19, 2007 Posted January 19, 2007 If you don't want to put too much time in it, and it needs to be content rich and easily updateable then CMS is your best bet. Once the site 'takes off' you can guarantee your head will want more and more, I suspect you'll want non IT techs to be able to update it. Take a serious look at plone drupal (and the rest) before you settle for Frontpage (I assume you mispelled Dreamweaver?), CMS will also make it much easier for someone to pick up if you leave. As for time - really depends on what goes into it. http://www.plone.org (steeper learning curve for admin, probably better IMO) http://www.drupal.org (lots of plugins, easy to add functionality)
_Bat_ Posted January 19, 2007 Posted January 19, 2007 Absolutely ruddy ages. It took (and still is) taking that long for me anyway. Its been about half a year since I started building two websites (one for each of the schools I work for) and one of them only went live yesterday. The other is no where near ready and both are still a big work in progess. I am doing it with Joomla though admittedly, it should be a little quicker with frontpage/dreamweaver. As webman told me before I started and as I have found out again and again since then, the bit that takes longest is waiting for content from teachers and other staff. Just make sure that management know that it could take a while, especially on top of your corrent work load.
_Bat_ Posted January 19, 2007 Posted January 19, 2007 The website that went live yesterday (bearing in mind it is not complete) is *REMOVED* (I know its a bit OT, but check out this pic that the kids drew of me: *REMOVED* This is my real photo: http://img64.imageshack.us/img64/8486/james1vr2.jpg Do they really look that alike? Haha.
steve Posted January 19, 2007 Posted January 19, 2007 I too would recommend joomla even for the most basic site. You have to factor in learning joomla, design, content, smt consultation, sorting hosting, testing. For 1 person, i'd say about 100 hours depending on the amount of content.
webman Posted January 19, 2007 Posted January 19, 2007 Definately go for a CMS - it will save you loads of time in the long run, and if you can trust staff, you can even allow others to update their own pages And getting the content is still the most difficult part.
alan-d Posted January 19, 2007 Posted January 19, 2007 I'd suggest using a CMS - it's a lot quicker as you are just editing pages that already exist. If a feature doesn't exist on the stock version then a good CMS will have plenty of support and plugins. This Site took about 2 or 3 days to go live. I just add and take away bits when I have time
Guest Posted January 19, 2007 Posted January 19, 2007 Have to say CMS is the way to go. As has been said before getting the content is the hardest part for any school website. The actual Joomla install can take just an afternoon. Getting the right layout / design can take some time. I tend to use the school prospectus to flesh out the site with the static content. If this is already in digital form then this can reduce the creation time no end.
MkII Posted January 20, 2007 Posted January 20, 2007 Pic looks just like you Bat! Another person to hit you with the CMS stick crt-ict. DIY = quicker in the short term > potentially all time consuming in the long term. No idea how long i've spent on sites. Even with prectice it can take a long time. I thought - wasn't it you SYSMAN_MK - had a good idea - pay a designer to make a theme for a CMS such as Joomla- it'll cost very little and you'll have a quality base to work from - these will cost you £100 max. A Joomla install will take very little time to set up I think - an afternoon seems very generous. I recon about 15 minutes when practiced. Getting your head around joomla Admin may take a little getting used to - so still a few days of your time will be needed in the first place, and then you've got to train staff delegated to input info. In our LEA our resident Linux guru built his own simple CMS specifically for Primary Schools. It's a bit basic but then it does the job well, and nearly all of our county primaries use it - with little or no training. Here's an example: http://www.builth.powys.sch.uk/home/index.php That's version 1. There is a version 2 which has CSS editing capabilities.
beeswax Posted January 20, 2007 Posted January 20, 2007 same here with cms, just click the dub dub dub link below.
mattx Posted January 20, 2007 Posted January 20, 2007 I used Dreamweaver for the school in which I am a LEA gov. Took me a few months but I kept it nice and simple. A standard page for everything. Nothing too flash as its news and information the parents and public want. KISS - Keep It Simple Stupid !!
SimpleSi Posted January 20, 2007 Posted January 20, 2007 @_bat_ Just a bit of feedback but ... I don't know if its just me but the title logo seems very blurry - it makes my eyes try to focus on it but fail regards Simon
_Bat_ Posted January 20, 2007 Posted January 20, 2007 While I used Joomla, I'm not sure I would say it is quicker to do so, especailly for someone who had never used Joomla before (as I hadn't). It takes weeks to feel you are in full control over your website and making complicated mistakes, undoing/fixing those mistakes and starting again took up most of my time to be honest. Taking a prebuild template and editing it takes ages as well. You have to go through all the HTML/PHP/CSS manually trying to understand exactly how the template has been put together before you can even begin to modify it. There are usually loads of images involved in the templates as well which are a pain when it comes to changing the colour of a template like I did. My template was red to begin with and the white section that "the oval primary school" title is in is made purely of images which has red borders etc. I had to open each individual image in The GIMP and modify them (which was a right royal pain to do with the curved borders - it took an entire afternoon just to do that bit properly). I've had some bad comments about the title (apparently its too blurry) and the menu bar (no-one likes that font apparently) but I need to get some more bad comments about those before I can be bothered to change them lol.
_Bat_ Posted January 20, 2007 Posted January 20, 2007 @_bat_ Just a bit of feedback but ... I don't know if its just me but the title logo seems very blurry - it makes my eyes try to focus on it but fail regards Simon Haha, thanks. I hadn't actually seen this before my last post lol but you are the second person to say that. Guess i'll have to change it.
tosca925 Posted January 20, 2007 Posted January 20, 2007 I upgraded ours a couple of years ago. I used Dreamweaver and nothing else. It took me ages to decide on layout and colour theme and then even longer to upgrade it all. Ours was a big site and this is why it took me so long. I ended up doing a lot of it in my own time because i was put under pressure to get it done. We also use Sharepoint now for our VLE which i look after as well. I had done some Frontpage training so this helped with the sharepoint stuff. What ever time you estimate add 50% because you always come up against other problems and while your updating it new content will be needed be added while you going along. I looked at a CMS site but i just aint got the time to give to this project just yet.
SimpleSi Posted January 20, 2007 Posted January 20, 2007 @_bat_ Just to be fair - please feel free to lambast my efforts http://www.euxton.lancs.sch.uk (inherited) http://www.rivington.lancs.sch.uk (inherited) http://www.hoole.lancs.sch.uk http://www.whitefield-pri.lancs.sch.uk http://www.howick.lancs.sch.uk Who needs CMS when you've got frames regards Simon
_Bat_ Posted January 20, 2007 Posted January 20, 2007 @_bat_ Just to be fair - please feel free to lambast my efforts Lol. Nah, I like criticism almost as much as I like praise. I've got a whole bunch of criticism on another forum I posted the site on. I prefer people tell me the truth so I can actually do something about it. Another common one I have got is that the site doesn't look like a primary school website. It needs more kids stuff on there. Who needs CMS when you've got frames I used frames for the first professional website I ever created. It does the job until it comes to search engines. In that area it proves to be an absolute nightmare, especially see as it was a site that really needed to be search engine optimised. There are some crazy javascript codes lying around on the internet that bypass the problems of frames and search engines, but search engines tend to penalise the websites that use this code as it is the same code that spammers sometimes use to do their stuff that they do.
_Bat_ Posted January 20, 2007 Posted January 20, 2007 I very much like your idea of using PDFs in frames, i'd never thought of doing that before.
crc-ict Posted January 20, 2007 Author Posted January 20, 2007 Take a serious look at plone drupal (and the rest) before you settle for Frontpage (I assume you mispelled Dreamweaver?) I would personally love to use Dreamweaver - my training and experience is in it, and I know next to nothing about Frontpage because I've never used it. The trouble is, we get Frontpage for about £30 through the LEA and I don't think I'd get them to stump up the cash for Dreamweaver. On that note, does anyone know roughly what an educational licence for Dreamweaver (possibly Studio) would come to? I'd ideally like to be able to use it at home on my PC to develop the site, then transfer it to school to maintain the site. Cheers
_Bat_ Posted January 20, 2007 Posted January 20, 2007 I use mozilla composer/NVU (both are a little buggy) for any sites I do in a WYSIWYG editor simply cos its free. It does the basics only to be honest but I find it does the job for me.
MkII Posted January 20, 2007 Posted January 20, 2007 MM Studio sells for about £75 for the education licence: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Studio-Student-Teacher-Professional-Dreamweaver/dp/B000AP1N8S?tag2=gp04-21
alonebfg Posted January 20, 2007 Posted January 20, 2007 i know you can get it here as well http://www.britsoftware.com
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