Hi,
I am a free lance web designer and have designed sites for local business. Mostly I designed a 5 page, 10 page or Catalogue (5 or 10 page website with image gallery) websites and charge them around $75-$150 per website.
Now web-developers/internet companies etc provide CMS based website. Though I know what is CMS (in concept) but never quite developed it for clients.
I want to know:
Q. What is CMS based website. ( I mean is it that customer would be administering the content on their site etc).
Q. Where the CMS needs to be installed for customers to be able to administer ? Is it their computer or on the server where their website is hosted, in that case do I need to set-up the CMS for them ?
Q. Which is the easiest to use & setup (for me) and administer (for client) CMS package i.e Joomla, WordPress. Drupal etc. ?
Q. What is the acutal use of CMS in a 5-10 page simple websites where no database is used.
Q. How much should I charge my clients for settings up a CMS based system in relation to the above price for simple websites.
Thanks
web developer
Possibly Related Posts:
- Any One Can Teach Me Joomla or Drupal?
- I’m designing a website for a client, is my price fair?
- drupal developers in India ?
- What web development software should I use?
- step by step on how to build a social networking website?
A: A CMS based website is any website wherein all or part of the content of that site is editable by end-users via tools that allow them to avoid hand-coding. Typically CMS systems also come with pre-packaged ‘widgets’ or ‘modules’ that provide some sort of front-end functionality, (such as photo galleries or message boards), that would otherwise have to have been installed/configured separately by the user.
A. Your popular CMS systems are all designed to be installed on the web server where the site will be hosted, so the answer to your question is yes, you’ll probably need to set it up for them…but most of them come with easy install instructions.
A. The ease of setup and administration is directly related to the number and depth of the features provided. The easiest is probably WordPress, but as it is really intended mainly for blogging, its also the least feature rich out of the box. However, none of them are exactly rocket science.
A. Firstly, if you’re using a CMS, you’re using a database…the nature of the beast is that you need a DB…But if you have no other use for a DB in the project, a CMS still gives your users the ability to edit their own content without your intervention. Having said that, you could easily custom build a solution for that without having to have all the weight of a full-blown CMS.
A. If the nature of the project is just ‘drop in the CMS and give me template that already exists, then your current price should be more than sufficient for the 30 minutes you’ll spend doing the setup…However, if they’re asking for customization, you’ll have to base your pricing on how difficult you find that customization to be…I’ve heard of CMS installs getting into the 1k range or more.