Websites: Migration, Development, and Maintenance

I can help you with your website at any stage, whether you have an old site you need to migrate, or a new site you're still planning.

I offer three solutions: Static HTML, Wordpress, and Drupal. These are all free and open source programs; you won't have to worry about vendor lock-in or licensing fees.

They're also widely supported. I want to help you, but I don't want to be a single point of failure. With these platforms, you can find thousands of other developers out there, if you need them.

With templates, anything can look good

Before I explain these choices, though, I want to make sure you understand that the difference is how they work, not how they look. Sometimes people wonder about the difference between how Wordpress and Drupal might look. They won't. They'll look however you want them to look.

Basic uses for these three choices

• Static HTML: a "brochure" site with 5 or less pages that won't change
• Wordpress: a "blog" or "news" site, which focuses on articles or "pages"
• Drupal: everything else: complex sites that can do pretty much anything you can think of

If you've already heard enough, you can hop out of this article and contact me about your website. If you haven't really thought about these kinds of choices so far, read on.

Static HTML: A "brochure" site that won't change

Do you just need a few pages online about yourself or your business? A static HTML site is a good choice. However, this is only a good solution if you don't plan to update your site. Like a brochure, it will stay as it is.

Benefits of Static HTML

• least expensive option (least developer time)
• no need for software upgrades

Drawbacks of Static HTML

• updating or adding pages requires knowledge of HTML
• not a viable solution for more than a few pages

There are definitely situations where static HTML is a good fit. For instance, you do all your business through a brick-and-mortar store, but people sometimes ask if you have a website. Or you want to have your email address be at your store's website.

In general, though, the drawbacks are too severe. If you're thinking of making or migrating your website, you're probably thinking of a dynamic site that you can actually change and update easily.

Wordpress: A "blog" for you to update easily.

How do you update your current site? If you're still editing HTML manually, or using a custom-coded system by a programmer who's long gone, it's probably time to migrate. Updating your site should be as easy as blogging.

The word "blog" may have an unprofessional flavor for you, but what we're interested in is how it works. The technology of the blog has made it extremely easy to update your site. With Wordpress, you can add new articles and edit old ones without having to deal with a web developer at all.

Benefits of Wordpress

• easiest for you to use: adding and editing articles is extremely simple
• easiest to upgrade: you can even opt to upgrade it yourself, with a couple clicks

Drawbacks of Wordpress

• not so good at anything besides serving simple articles
• lots of plugins, but not as good as Drupal

You can do a lot with Wordpress, far beyond what you think of as a "blog". For many situations, its ease-of-use makes it the best option out there.

But you are still basically limited to writing articles. Your users can't do much of anything besides read and post comments. What if you want them to buy your goods? Or post in your forum? Or what if you have a very particular kind of article? For example, you want to write book reviews, and always include the book cover?

You may be able to find Wordpress plugins for these tasks. But in my experience, once you get past basic articles and pages, you're much better off with Drupal.

Drupal: Anything you want

Drupal was designed to be flexible. In some ways, it is a "framework," which means that the whole point is for you to choose which extra pieces to snap on. Drupal has a "module" system that makes it very easy for me to add new features for you. Major sites use Drupal, including the White House and The Economist. As you can see, their sites are quite different.

Benefits of Drupal

• amazingly powerful You can do almost anything you want.
• I can't even start listing all the things you can do with Drupal. Seriously.
• single user system People can log in once to your site, and then shop, post in the forum, and more. All with the same login.

Drawbacks of Drupal

• probably the most expensive option. The code is free, but complexity = developer time
• upgrading needs to be done with care (though they've made it as easy as possible)
• As of early 2011, there are probably more Wordpress developers out there than Drupal developers, though this may change.

One of my favorite features of Drupal is a module called Views. Usually, a CMS has a few pre-defined ways for you to display your content. You might get a "new posts" listing, an "archive" listing, and a few "category" listings. With Drupal Views, you can list your content in any way you can imagine. Want to have a block that shows the most recent 2 posts in the Sledding Category? Done. How about the most recent 8 posts in Sledding, Snowboarding, or Skydiving, but nothing else? Easy.

Usually, Views are combined with another power Drupal feature -- custom fields. Remember that book review with the book cover? In Drupal, it's easy: you create a new "book review" content type, and add an image field for the book cover. And another field for the author. And another for the publisher. Now you can make a different page for each publisher. Or show all the book reviews, but let the user sort by author, or publisher, or any other field you can think of.

Wordpress is excellent for basic article management. But for anything more complex, go with Drupal.

Of course, if you need help with your existing Wordpress site and plugins, I can certainly have a look.

Migration

If you already have a site, there's a good chance it's not Wordpress or Drupal. Don't worry. I've migrated sites with hundreds of pages. I'll get them into the new system, and I can clean out old formatting cruft too, if you need that.

Why don't you see any prices?

Experience has taught me that every website is very different. Some people prefer that I stay on the project until every last detail is just right. I often spend hours on chat, making the changes to the site as we talk about them.

Others may be on a strict budget; they want a flat bid so I can do the heavy lifting, then they'll take the time to learn the software and do the tweaks on their own.

Either approach is fine with me. We'll talk it all out beforehand, so you won't have any surprises.

What ongoing costs can you expect?

When you think of the cost for a website, you probably think mainly of the initial development cost. This is the big one. We'll need to take days, weeks, or months to get your site ready, and then launch it. But just like anything else you maintain, your website will have ongoing costs. When you see prices for websites online, they often don't include these ongoing costs, which are part of any website. These include:

Domain Registration

You must register your domain every year. It's like getting a license plate (except a lot easier, faster, and cheaper).

Domain Hosting

Just like your license plate is no fun without an actual car, you need to rent server (computer) space somewhere so you can put the actual web site files somewher. Servers vary considerably in quality, and cheapest is not best. Ever. If you already have a server, I'll check it out. It may be fine, or it may not be able to support the new site you want.

Software Upgrades

When you buy a car, you take for granted that you'll have to get oil changes and replace worn belts. Software needs maintenance too. If you don't keep your software up-to-date, it's like skipping your oil changes. After 30,000 miles, your engine wouldn't be very secure. If you go years without upgrading your software, you'll have the same problem. All software has problesm and security holes; the good software offers regular updates. For Wordpress and Drupal, the code of these updates are free, but you still need to pay for developer time to actually get your site updated. nn The exception here is static HTML, which never needs upgrading. Wordpress is almost an exception, because it can be very easy to upgrade.

Regular backups

If you don't have a recent backup of your website, your entire online business could vanish at any moment. Seriously. Backups are critical to anything you do with computers, but especially with websites, which have to be constantly exposed to the general insanity of the Internet.

You can save a good deal of money by learning how to do simple regular backups to your own computer. Or, you can have me take care of that for you. Backups aren't hard; what can be hard is forming the habit. But not nearly as hard as rebuilding nine months of work when a sprinkler goes off in the server room.

Shopping Cart

If your site includes a shopping cart, an extra, ongoing expense is a merchant to process credit card orders. Options include Paypal and Authorize.net.

Tell me about your site!

I've talked enough, now it's your turn. Drop me a note and tell me what you have in mind. The more clearly you know what you want your site to do, the closer we'll be to figuring out an estimate. Thanks!

Contact me about your website.