By ghtgillen on

I have a project in the pipeline with my company to create a Customer Portal focused mostly on educational content.
My requirements are fairly basic:

- Install Drupal
- Help me pick / design a good them with either horizontal or vertical tabs / subtabs
- Pick and install a WYSIWYG editor for pages so users can easily add a page with links, attachments, etc. w/o having to code
- Suggest any useful user management add-ons
- Make sure I can manage access to tabs, subtabs, and possibly even certain content by user groups etc.
- Maker sure my pages and related content is searchable

The site I have in mind is simply a set of tabs / subtabs (horizontal or vertical) linking to pages that have descriptions and links to educational content for users - this could be FAQs, videos (hosted by 3rd party), documents etc.

The bids I am getting are in the $25k range. Looking for confirmation this sounds about right.
I am a little wary of "Project Management" overhead, or "Creative Design" overhead when I think in many cases developers just reuse stuff they've done before.

Comments? Thoughts? Think you can do it for less?
Please reply to this post.

Comments

criznach’s picture

criznach commented

I'm not sure we have enough specs to decide if 25k is reasonable. I see a few clues that indicate this is not such a simple project. You use the terms "groups", and "documents". Both of these imply a large range of possibilities, which could be very easy or very hard to implement.

Project management is something that can't be reused. It's typically time for meetings, phone calls, clarifications, and setup details. If you're hiring reputable and experienced developers for a large project, expect at least some project management time. It's unavoidable. If you don't have a clear blueprint of what you need, consultants may be padding this number by a larger margin.

Creative design cost really depends on the quality of design you're looking for. If you're willing to use a pre-existing theme as a base, it will be less than if you must have a 100% unique and original look. Are you looking for "brother in law" design, or "ad agency" design?

Can you provide some examples of how groups are used and what they do? What does membership in a group allow a user to do, and how is membership granted? Do groups imply group permissions as well?

What would you call a typical document? Are you willing to accept size and format limitations for documents? Does the content of these documents need to be searchable? Are documents public, private, or accessible by group membership?

http://www.trailheadinteractive.com

nevets’s picture

nevets commented

Given so little detail, they may bid high to account for unknowns. You have "help me pick", "suggest", etc which implies some back an forth which takes time. That said, at $100/hr $25K would allow for 250 hours which sounds high but the devil is in the details and "The site I have in mind is simply a set of tabs / subtabs (horizontal or vertical) linking to pages that have descriptions and links to educational content for users - this could be FAQs, videos (hosted by 3rd party), documents etc." is open ended. Personally I charge more for "etc.".

bcn’s picture

bcn commented

I really like this line...

Personally I charge more for "etc.".

Both of the comments above cover most of what I had to add to this topic. The bottom line is that quality and complexity both take time and cost money, and without highly detailed specifications, developers need to add risk insurance to poorly specified projects. Feel free to post more details, but I've personally seen project that seem quite straight forward easily eclipse 250 hours of just development work...

mediacurrent’s picture

mediacurrent commented

Graham,

I do not want this to look like like I am plugging a blog post because that is not my intention. However, I think you would get some real value looking over this guide we just put out - you can download a free copy here:

http://www.mediacurrent.com/blogs/mediacurrent-releases-free-best-practi...

In short, it speaks to the exact points that Noah is raising.

Hope this helps,
Dave
Mediacurrent

cmsproducer’s picture

cmsproducer commented

My Suggestion is for you and your vendor to establish what the hourly or daily rates will be for various development processes, and then come up with a fairly detailed scope of features. This will help the both of you establish and agree on a clear pricing range that is not a mystery or 'black box' price. If the vendor/developer has provided you with a portfolio of previous projects (I hope they did...) then you can ask to know what similar projects from the portfolio cost.

The key objective is to have an understanding of how the 25K amount comes to be sot hat you can be comfortable with it, and so that you can have the opportunity to tweak the scope while knowing how that will affect the final cost