UK Drupal Hosting/Management - Tenders solicited

Hello All,

I represent a UK society that is looking to move it's web presence to a more professional level. While the society site is currently run by a volunteer (me) on a minimum cost host, we are looking to move to a more professional presence. This is mainly due to a recent problem with our current host whose filesystem became trashed and they were unable to provide a backup to restore from (the site having grown too large to be effectively backed up via my unreliable broadband account).

At present we are seeking expressions of interest from companies who can give us ball-park figures for how much these services may cost. These proposals will then be taken back to my society and discussed in depth before we move to put a more formal contract in place. This will be a slow process.

We have already identified one quote, which while competitive uses the Joomla! platform which the current site has been transitioned from (to Drupal) and I do not consider to be robust or featured enough to meet the demands we currently have.

Please note that at this time we are ONLY considering UK-BASED companies and hosting.

The basics of the package that would need to be provided are:
* Fully managed website hosting including regular backups to physical media (e.g. DVD) that the society can take possession of
* Rich hosting package to include usual features, including FTP accounts, mailing lists, MySQL databases for other Intranet type applications e.g. document management facilities, email accounts, forwards and autoresponders, spam filtering, etc, etc.
* Hosting and maintenance of Drupal site including maintenance of core and module patches
* Support and assistance to non-technical users in running of the site (the society admins)
* Handle support calls from users in the usage of the site / providing help documenation.
* Loading of content & assistance with layout (specifically, blocks) from time to time.

There may also be an amount of design and coding work associated with this, to include
* Implementation of an e-commerce solution for membership applications - we currently process credit card transactions off-line in our own machine so would need to either capture CC# securely for subsequent use offline or integrate to a low cost payment gateway. This would need to be extremely user-freindly to use, both for members subscribing and in retrieving the details at our side - both audiences likely to be very non-technical
* Enhancing various parts of the site, such as: display of user profiles, interactive map of regional clubs, image galleries, slicker front page, linking of user accounts to society roles (e.g. me123 = treasurer)
* Easy interface to manage who is a society member or not, and granting(/removing) privileges for these members (can access society documents that non-members cannot)
* Setting up moderation features
* Re-theming (if agreed / as needed)
* Meeting relevant standards

The current site is still being restored from the crash with more still to be done. Features (major) currently include core + views + cck + contemplate, taxonomies, forum, blog, image + image upload + image attach, BUEditor, node access. Features (major) still to restore include private messaging, subscriptions, glossary, word filtering, advanced forum, sitemap, archive, user_badges, smileys. The current theme is based on roopletheme's tapestry.

Your estimate should consist of two parts - initial transfer, set-up and build, and ongoing (yearly) maintenance costs. I will restate that while budget is an issue, we are seeking a value for money service here (does not necessarily rule out higher spend for more service), and are only looking for broad estimates at the moment. An estimate of timescales should also be provided. You may choose to break down your work estimate further according to the tasks described in brief above. It would be beneficial to us also if you could include estimates for adding additional features to the site as needed in an on-going fashion. An idea of where you are physically based in the UK would also be of interest (the society is quite well spread out over the UK, and someone may be able to have local discussion)

In your initial response, please point me at a website for your company and include details of some sites that you have designed / currently manage. If you host your sites yourselves please give some idea of server specificaiton and connectivity; otherwise also give details of your hosting supplier. Should the build be awarded to yourselves and successful then I am sure we would agree to be included in your portfolio of work. Any modules or code written as part of this process should be donated into the drupal community through this site wherever possible.

I'll happily divulge more information and point you to the current site as you need, I will also answer questions where I can. I have not taken part in a formal process such as this before and while I have tried to give as many details as possible, I am sure that there will be more things you would need to know. I would prefer details to be discussed via email (contact me via drupal) but I'll also answer comments to this thread if I can.

Thanks for reading,
Gareth