How much for a website?

[Mickey]

Offtopic now, but try not giving a deadline at all. Or to be more useful, have set deadlines before you've decided what work will be done, on a regular date (fortnightly or monthly works best) then instead of saying when everything will be done, tell them you'll have "x" amount done. No point lying to make you look good, it'll bite you in the bum when you fail.

Yes, but everyone wants an idea of when projects will be done. It's not very often people will accept no timescales at all. Clients also want to know the costs before the project too, so you have to come up with some time estimates even at the quoting stage.

Coming up with half way accurate estimates is a job in itself, it takes a long time before you start to get an idea of how long a job will take you. Often you're still wrong but the trick is to make sure you over-estimate.

 

[Dj_Jestar]

That's the added bonus of having a set timescale, you can give an exact estimate - it'll be whatever the sprint will cost (i.e. if you decide on a monthly sprint, then it'll be one month before you deliver some software, thus you estimate one months cost.)

Key note to remember is delivering software does not indicate a complete product, but it will have *some* of the features they require.

It's a huge subject which I will no doubt fail to explain properly, but I can point you to Ken Schwaber, who is the god-father of Scrum and has created some very explanatory books and presentations, such as this google tech talk: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7230144396191025011

 

[Sic]

This is hardly a complicated website, even building from scratch wouldn't take a day to code, if using paypal.

hah! It'd probably take a day to design the layout and plan how it's going to work. maybe more. as Mickey said, if you want a decent job done, it'll take a while and prepare to pay. If you don't care about the job done, get someone to do it in a day - it'll be noticeably different.

and also - if you end up finding someone who's trying to build a portfolio to do it, don't act like your site is such a huge opportunity for them, and don't extract the urine on the price you're paying.

 

[iCraig]

hah! It'd probably take a day to design the layout and plan how it's going to work. maybe more. as Mickey said, if you want a decent job done, it'll take a while and prepare to pay. If you don't care about the job done, get someone to do it in a day - it'll be noticeably different.

Spot on.

Good things aren't cheap and cheap things aren't good. This mantra applies to website design just as much as any other industry.

 

[furnace]

Good things aren't cheap and cheap things aren't good

*changes MSN name*

 

[boycee]

A website that includes a CMS, forum, and a purchase page is "very basic"?

yeah I love when people say that too mate. lol.

All I want is a basic page, with a news page I can manage with cms, perhaps upload photos. Mailing list, and a shop and forum bit.

Easy right lol.

Thing is tho, if you design one well at the start making it very dynamic, then you can easily skin it time and time again.

 

[Mono]

Build it yourself

Might end up looking pants... but YOU DID IT

 

[HTMLHugo]

id give it a go yourself tbh

it might not be perfect but it will at least allow you to put more effort into the way you want it to work exactly.

if you need help this forum is the place for it