SchoolWebsite.co.uk

[Simcfc73]

Has anyone had good experiences with these guys, I have read the negative reviews on another post but there must be some on here who like them... their portfolio seems pretty good and the CMS system is quite impressive... or am I missing something.

[Simcfc73]

Just to reopen a 4 year old thread our marketing manager went with these after a whizz bang presentation. I have to admit I was quite impressed but....

 

She has left now and I am configuring it and its AWFUL from a professional point of view. Our last one was on Joomla which gave us loads more control over how it looked. The secondary template is very static with very little control over what goes where. Maybe its what was agreed but its very restrictive.

 

Seriously thinking of moving it to Joomla next year and saving £500 a year.

 

Quite ironic there backend is called fluency... which it so isnt

[Arreks]

^ We've used them for a few years, the design they came up with is very nice but in terms of customization and control it's very limited. For anything more than changing a block of text you'd have to pay them to do it.. so yeah.

[Bankesy]

Hello

 

We went with School Website having previously had a Joomla site, I picked up the project 75% of the way through with the new head and it was just really a lot of effort to get anything changed even at the design stage because it had 'already been agreed'.

 

These other posts are right, Fluency is restrictive is what you can customise forcing you to contact School Website and be charged for most changes.

 

Cleverbox designed the website at my last place and that turned out really rather well.

[Jaan]

We needed a site pretty badly... i started to get some quotas and was gobsmacked!.... we went self hosting and did a wordpress install.... we did the site ourselves, Having a Graphic designer and web designer helped massively though! Edited April 14, 2021 by ZeroHour

[Bankesy]

Hello

 

I think my last place had a pretty good setup employing somebody to be 'Web Services Manager' and basically deal with the back and forth between the design company and SLT and then to update and maintain the site upon completion.

 

It took a bit of the strain off of the tech team too as things like SLG and VLE were also dealt with by the web services manager.

[Simcfc73]

Would love to share ours with everyone to warn against using them but best not.

 

The back end is no better than Joomla which at least had the ability to add stuff on to it.

[WJWB]

Just want to add my 2 cents here... So far my experience with them has been terrible!

 

I took over as IT Manager again about 75% of the way though the project.

 

Build time for website took 3 months longer then expected! I think this is because they slacked off once they realized my predecessor was leaving and put the project on the back burner. They've insisted there have been no delays, while providing a timetable of events that shows website build took 3 month while telling me each phase is meant to take a month.. Only a slight contradiction there. Their CMS system is, in my opinion not great, certainly no better then other open source CMS systems available. And finally their communication was abysmal.

 

Looking at how much was paid (all up front) I really can't see why I'd recommend them. For the cost you could hire a web designer and have a word-press site built. Really rather worried once the contract for hosting is up how much it will be to keep the site up (just hosting) I highly doubt we'll be able to have their proprietary CMS system installed on a self hosted server if they want too much money to continue hosting it for us. And to echo the issues with getting any changes made to the website.

[Simcfc73]

I take some of the blame for ours because I thought it would be better than it was and the decision was the marketing dept as they wanted to take over all of it. Currently we have a website that is not flexible and very slow to load up, we have asked for some changes which they are charging lots for to improve it but its taken 2 months for that, communication is awful and I agree as soon as they get the money they are off the grid.

 

Would avoid at all costs and if I had time would have dumped them and put our website onto a joomla site with a decent template. Think the hosting is £1000 a year or something similar.. and I bet they would charge to get the data off if you didn't pay for the hosting.

[southhamster]

I take some of the blame for ours because I thought it would be better than it was and the decision was the marketing dept as they wanted to take over all of it. Currently we have a website that is not flexible and very slow to load up, we have asked for some changes which they are charging lots for to improve it but its taken 2 months for that, communication is awful and I agree as soon as they get the money they are off the grid.

 

Would avoid at all costs and if I had time would have dumped them and put our website onto a joomla site with a decent template. Think the hosting is £1000 a year or something similar.. and I bet they would charge to get the data off if you didn't pay for the hosting.

 

I echo this. Our experience has been disappointing. 7 months before it was done and then randomly live without telling us. Loads of content missing and generally inflexible. I was staggered to find how much it cost and we provided all the photos too. Ongoing issue with the old Web address giving broken links instead of forwarding. Not impressed. I knocked up a personal website with Serif Web plus for £50 which I reckon is just as good.