I am in charge of the website for a City Government and we are in the market for a complete redesign. I have decent drupal experience and have done lots of research about Drupal on government sites and I have analyzed my requirements enough to determine that I think I should be hiring a developer to come in and execute this project rather than hire a job shop firm. I made this determination because I have extensive experience in Business Analysis and enough experience with Drupal that I can pretty much guide a good developer through executing this project. I would want this developer to come in and use an Acquia Dev Cloud model as the hosting environment and I would go with Drupal 7 because of the availability of modules that are running stable on 7. I chose DevCloud because I want managed, optimized Drupal hosting that I don't have to worry about patches and such. We are not a big IT shop so the most of the tech stuff I can offload the better. I think an experienced Developer can help me in the areas of Drupal that I'm weak on due to a lack of experience such as user access, taxonomy and views. I know these are going to play heavy in my site and I also know not setting them up correct in the beginning can mean trouble. Here is where I need advice.
- Any thoughts about my choice of Acquia DevCloud and Drupal 7?
- What is the best resource for finding a single developer who would be willing to come to my office and work on this for a given period of time (Boston area)?
- For budget purposes, I know what I have to spend. Will an individual developer be willing to work on a whole project cost basis or will likely only work hourly?
- Any suggestions on writing a contract for this type of job?
Comments
DevCloud should be a good
DevCloud should be a good choice if you don't mind the relatively high price.
A lot of people are watching Paid Services section of these forums. Someone would probably respond. You can check the track record of the drupal.org username supplied by any respondents, as rates and skill levels vary wildly.
I would be nervous of working on project cost (not that I am in the market as I cannot work in Boston!) because specifications of a website (maybe any software) creep during a project. Indeed, when a UX person gets involved specs may not so much creep but leap to a higher league of complexity to implement. The the developer implements it. The UX person reconsiders, and thinks of something completely different which is, after all, what is /really/ needed, and so on. Even without that, most clients tend to request new features when their initial specs have been completed, and sometimes feel they want are small (because they look small) when they are actually the most time-consuming to implement. This is why a shop will work on an estimate, never a fixed quotation.
Contract? maybe you need some non-disclosure. At the end of the day he /she has to work well and get paid. If you have an overall price for the job and a contract, and you are not happy, what then? It does not make sense to my mind that you or the developer would want to create a postion where you might sue him over quality of work, a case which whatever the outcome would have the potential to wipe him out with legal fees (but which is unlikely to yield worthwhile damages, and in the end does not get site built). A simple contract allowing either side to end the relationship without incurring serious losses or legal costs, if it is not working, makes sense to me, if you really need a written contract.
Digit Professionals