I am planning on creating a small 30 page website maximum, but need a few people with not html knowledge to have access to the site.
We have been quoted £20,000 by a company to do this, which is well out of our league, so was thinking about going down the cms and joomal option. Which has left me with a few questions
If you’re looking for a simple CMS that’s open source and isn’t going to require much programming work, I’d recommend you look at WordPress. Yes, it’s a blogging platform but for a 30 page site it could easily be used as a CMS.
Holy mackerel—£20,000. I wish I could charge like that!
I haven’t used joomla, but I’ve seen plenty of problems with it. Still, lots of people use it.
Other options (apart from WordPress) include MODx (free) and [URL=“http://expressionengine.com/”]ExpresionEngine (not free, but the best option). Those two don’t write messy code for you, giving you total freedom of code and layout, so they are worth a look.
Of it you want a purely hosted solution, with a monthly fee, you could try options like SquareSpace, [URL=“http://www.preation.com/”]Eden or [URL=“http://www.webvanta.com/”]Webvanta.
Another good option is CMSMadeSimple, which is easier to use that Joomla et at. but very popular.
Lastly, if you just want simple management, with the ability to edit regions on a page, try Perch or [URL=“http://www.cushycms.com/”]CushyCMS.
There are thousands of options, which is a good ro bad thing, depending on how you look at it!
Both Jeff and Ralph make good suggestions. Wordpress requires some PHP knowledge, and the learning curve for Joomla is quite steep. To me, £20,000 is a huge price for a 30 page site, assuming there isn’t fancy-fancy stuff going on in those 30 pages. But I’m not a commercial designer, so I wouldn’t know for sure. (That’s over $29,000 US dollars. Whoosh!)
Hmm, £20,000? Unless you are asking for a “bespoke system” and graphics I think they’ve thought of a number and tripled it, and if it’s just static nearly added a zero on the end.
If they had said near £100 per page I’d nearly believe that if it included additional “extras”. I’d get a more “realistic” quote if you opt for a developer.