By stuartgoff on

The owner of my company is looking at finding a design firm to handle the theming of our Drupal sites while functionality and content will still be kept internally.
My thoughts are that, web design and functionality are so integrated that while not impossible that this would be an expensive choice other than handing the whole website over to an outside firm.

We integrate a couple of 3rd party software for online chat (Boldchat) and our reservations software.

Our Site = gatewayreservations.com

Any thoughts?

Stuart

⋅ Categories: Drupal 4.7.x, Drupal 5.x

Comments

rernst’s picture

rernst commented

Theming can proceed more efficiently if the developer has access to a workable copy of the site. It helps sort out corner cases in theming with CSS.

I've never done it this way before, but I can only expect that your intuition is correct: theming will take far more time on the developers' end (costing you $$$) and take more time away out of your employees' days (costing you $$$) because of the extra back-and-forth necessary.

The best suggestion I could make is to let the developer access to a regularly-updated (or self-updating, perhaps) copy of your site. If you are concerned about proprietary information, a non-disclosure agreement may be in order (consult your lawyers) and is a standard part of outsourcing practice.

cogdina’s picture

cogdina commented

We specialize in Drupal Theme development.

What we always want from Clients is

1) Wireframes and site Schematics with detailed requirements
2) Visuals and Graphical Assets
3) Access to SVN/CVS and keeping us updated the releases so that all can be in sync on development status.

Most people think that themeing is simple and cheap. This is not the case. Building a custom standards compliant theme does take good amount time and effort. One must estimate for development as well as integration costs.

--
Rina
http://www.cogdina.com
- Design house focused on Drupal theme development