CMS advice

PixieLandGirl

PixieLandGirl

PixieLandGirl

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Joined
13 Jul 2009
Posts
1,133
Location
Cambs
Quick overview of what going on:
My dad's boss asked me to take a peek at their website. They're a small firm paying for a third party to host & provide website support etc, but they had the feeling the guy was possibly pulling a fast one. Stating he needed weeks to update 3 words on a page & add additional material would take longer at quite pricey amounts. At first I thought fair enough, if he's coding the pages & has a busy schedule then delays in work are to be expected.

Then I log in the admin panel only to find some bespoke CMS thats similar to wordpress - but you have to fiddle more to get it work & functionality is lacking, EG. you add an image but have no control where it goes, it just inserts itself at the top & the image doesnt appear in line with the text or text editor to enable it to be manipulated :(. Then I find that the homepage, about us, employment & contact us pages arent even listed in the admin panel :eek:. I also find out he never provided any FTP details, and the admin panel isn't allowing any uploading of images or files. Which at one point I considered could be write access issues at the server end, so I drafted an email on my dads behalf. Only to get the following:

"Yes you will have to load pdfs up direct. We can do it for you and make other page changes if you have problems. The Home, About, Employment and Contact pages are not admin controlled - strange I agree"

"the error messages we get seem to be database errors, not folder writing permission ones. We can amend pages (which involves writing) and load new images (ditto)."

"We need to get into the guts of the CMS code and see what is going on. Might be quite simple when we get there. Let me know if we can proceed for you - we would have to allocate a budget - up to say £120 / £240 ideally for the exploration and hopefully quick fix or estimate if more work is needed."

So up to £240 to just look at a CMS that isn't fully functioning :eek:
I'm thinking that with the website being fairly small (no shopping cart etc its purely for informaion purposes), the company could get away with moving else where or at least using wordpress (or similar) for the site and updating the information themselves. It surely would seem like a more cost effective solution .. as the guy has offered to come train the staff on the broken CMS for around £200+.

If you were in a similar situation what would your thoughts be?
 
I'd rather stab myself in the testicles with a rusty coat-hanger than wade through YET ANOTHER bespoke CMS system's code.

Me? I'd trash the lot and get a decent off-the-shelf CMS and migrate the content across.
 
Joomla/Wordpress/Drupal (depending on your site) - support from 3rd party developers and the actual developers mean that problems are fixed before you even realise you have one, updating takes seconds (and anyone can do it) and any expansion (ie. components/modules) are free, and so so easy to use
 
Hm i'm thinking Joomla or Wordpress then, although I may have to find someone to create a site template, as i'm fine with the installation, addons & showing the few staff how to use it but I wouldnt have a clue how to create a template :(
 
best to find one that has a similar sort of layout to what you want, and then edit the colours/fonts/images/css of that - much much easier!
 
blade007 said:
How can a company supply you with a broken product and then ask for budget to fix it?
Click to expand...

I think the fella has just managed to get away with things in the past with no one in the company having any understanding of how it works.
Until I went in the other day they had no admin or ftp access. The still don't have any form of hosting control panel & when he was asked for it he still didn't provide it :mad:

mattgaunt said:
I learnt everything I needed to know to get up and running with a custom wordpress template using these screencasts:

http://css-tricks.com/video-screencasts/25-designing-for-wordpress-part-one/

If you've done a bit of CSS and HTML coding before, you might be able to do something for them :-)
Click to expand...

The only editing ive done before is on PHPbb forums, basic colour & a little code editing. I'll have a look tho as I may be able to get my head around it.
 
A bit of an update.

The website had to sit on the back burner for a while as my dad's company has been busy overseas. They decided wordpress would be fine as the site itself is for information purposes only & will be relatively small. The contacted the 3rd-party to ask him set up a test sub-domain & got the following as a response:

"I assume you will only want it for a month or two?
As Wordpress is PHP based we need to put it on a different server from your main site.
Not much cost - £60 set up and £50 per quarter hosting, payable in advance (or £190 pa hosting if you prefer longer)."

:confused: .. I have a big dislike for this guy!

I'm thinking the best way to proceed might be to transfer the parked domain they have to an alternative host (they have mainsiteinternational pointing to mainsite), then build the new site & go from there.

What way would you go about it?
 
I would ditch this 3rd party pretty snappy. They are too keen to take tiny jobs and spout prices that seem inflated.

Does the business have the ability to bring the website in-house?

I'd get yourself a nice development domain, a bit of Vidahosting and a wordpress install on that. Get it all setup and running and then point your proper domain at Vidahost for the transition.
 
Pretty much what gord said. If it is only an information website and not too big should only take ~ 5 hours to recode it as a wordpress template and that's allowing for unforeseen niggles etc probably quick if it is REALLY simple. Set up some nice hosting with vidahost, point domain at it, bingo.
 
Ditch him, you're getting ripped off.

Agree with gord's points. Get yourself some hosting from TSO/Vidahost, install Wordpress and convert the existing site to that.

If you can't get your head round making the existing site a Wordpress template, you will be able to get someone to do it quite quickly. As Edward01 said, 5 hours is definitely do-able if you're used to doing it and there are no extensive plug-ins to configure - I should know, I do more or less a template a day :p
 
Hey guys thank you for the response.

The current website is out dated & the information is too. They have had problems in the past when asking for information to be put on etc. I threw them a quick example up on a test domain of mine as I have hosting with Vidahost & they we're pleased with the new style & what not. The problem they have is that no one in house has any experience at all & the third party has managed to keep them under the thumb & charge them for things in the past 3yrs+ for things they should be able to do for themselves (they don't have any admin for their domain at all).

I found out yesterday they actually have 3 domains registered, the .co.uk they have is redirected to the main site & was set-up to cover all bases.

I'd have little problem with getting them set up with Vidahost (possibly using the .co.uk) & then sort the other domain transfers from there (unless they are tied to the current 3rd party for X amount of time).

The only thing I am unsure of is their emails. As far as they are aware the same 3rd party provides their emails (they are currently looking into this), is transferring the email to Vida straight forward?
 
If you transfer the domains to a vida account that has cpanel attached it's a piece of cake. Simply go into cpanel - > Email -> set up accounts again with same passwords. All done.
 
Edward01 said:
If you transfer the domains to a vida account that has cpanel attached it's a piece of cake. Simply go into cpanel - > Email -> set up accounts again with same passwords. All done.
Click to expand...

Ah that's nice & simple then :D.
I'll advise them if they do go forward with it to back up all their existing mails via outlook :)
 
Hey guys, another quick question ... any ideas what these banners are? I would assume ad banners of some sort but want to double check.

This is what the company are currently being billed:

Tankex banner £40.00
Domain co.uk £30.00
Domain com £30.00
Irish banner £60.00
Sustainability banner £60.00
Web hosting £190.00

Many thanks guys :)
 
Well, searching for tankex banner, this thread is the first result so I'd say whatever it is, I doubt it's important. Do you have analytics? You could go and see where your visitors are coming from.

You're getting shafted with those prices, but to be fair, near everything in life is cheaper if you do it yourself.
 
I'ce advised them they need to go else where & forwarded them Vidahosts details. They have no admin currently so they are unable to have any control of their site. They have to email in any changes they want & of course this come at a cost!
 
Ye theyre looking at transfering once their current contract is due for renewal. Once that's done I can show them how to use wordpress. It's shocking this guy has been ripping them off for so long :(
 
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