Trend toward buying in web services?

[speckytecky]

A couple of large schools I know have recently replaced / or are in the process of replacing excellent in house web sites with bought in services. Seems a strange development in the light of economic circumstances - I'd have thought it far more economical to remain in house. Is this happening elsewhere?

 

P.S. Congrats to the Edugeek team on the revamp of the forum - nice refreshing clean look.

[old_n07]

They have done it where I am, the problem was the web team were tied up with the VLE's and not able to design the modern web site the College needs \ Marketing wants and it was cheaper to outsource than employ another web designer in house.

 

The bonus is that Marketing aren't bothering us every 5 mins with an update to the web site as they can do it themselves through the CMS system and if they have a problem they call someone else

[twin--turbo]

One of ours was outsourced by the management at the other site, the one at our site has been requested an in house rebuild.

 

reminds me we need to build a new VM Dev box for the webmaster...

 

We have run our own website since 2001, it's on about Version 4 now.

[maniac]

The danger with in-house developed websites is because they tend to be developed by a single person, if that person leaves your staff, then quite often the remaining staff don't have a clue how to manage the website properly. From the schools point of view out sourcing is a safer option for such things - I can see the logic in it.

 

These days it is not actually that expensive (in the grand scheme of things) to get a reasonable website designed for you using a decent CMS system providing you know what you're asking for you can avoid being ripped off. If we were to have a new website we would outsource, even thou we probably could develop it in house, our time can be better spent doing other things. I guess a lot of it depends on the stability of your support staff and the willingness of management to have an in house developed solution.

 

If you see the amount schools spend getting things like prospectuses printed, mailing letters home etc. spending a few thousand getting a decent website developed is not much and if used properly it can and will pay for its self.

[speckytecky]

Any recommendations on developers to speak to - I don't think we have any advertising on here yet?

[Dos_Box]

Actually in-house web services are threat to users. Outsourcing services are even provided by many web design service providers too.

 

Would you care to expand on your comment? Describing in-house web services as a threat is a pretty sweeping remark.