Here is an (admittedly old) article by a software engineer that supports and promotes Commercial CMS and Ektron specifically: http://ezinearticles.com/?Open-Source-CMS-Vs-Commercial-CMS---Its-On&id=2003706
I don’t know WHAT you’re reading, but it wasn’t my post. I made no assumptions about their website, since I don’t know anything about it. Twickster said “we’ve got seven years’ worth of reviews and essays to keep available,” and I think that can be reasonably extrapolated to hundreds of pages: even at only one article a week, that’s more than 350 articles, not even counting ordinary informational pages like the mission statement page. So if twickster believes that their site is fairly large, I have zero reason to dispute that.
That’s outside of the scope of the OP’s question, so I didn’t answer it. Her organization can do whatever it wants, of course. I still think $10K is reasonable for a complete overhaul, including a total redesign, software upgrades, and data migration. They’re basically building a brand-new website, a fairly large one at that, PLUS consulting PLUS porting the old data over.
They can do whatever they want. I “provided” that because you seemed to be under the mistaken impression that there aren’t CMSs which have a licensing fee, and I was giving you an example that proved otherwise.
I meant that static websites are different beasts than dynamic ones, and the work and therefore cost involved in upgrading them would be different. It was one example, out of four, of how people can’t just blindly determine without any details whether $10K for a new website was a rip-off or a steal. Certain website features cost more than others. Please read for comprehension.
More broadly, I mean the same thing as everyone else when I refer to static vs. dynamic websites.
To be succinct, I was responding to twickster’s question in my post, not to any of the tangents you brought up after I posted. I have no ability to see into the future and respond to it before it happens.
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We’re staying with the CMS we’ve got, just upgrading to the most recent version. We’re generally happy with it – we don’t have a lot of customized tweaking and appreciate the support services offered. The cost of the license upgrade is $50. Whether you think we should go open source or not, we’re not going to.
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Size of current site is more like 3500 pages – or more – rather than 350. We add an average of 10 posts a week; this past week it was 15, which is definitely high. Plus there’s supporting info, writer bios, etc.
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Exporting from old site to new will be via a tool called Datagrab, which costs $40.
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Our Internet presence is our mission – think of us as a blog rather than a charity. Yes, we’re a nonprofit, but we’re neither feeding the hungry nor curing cancer: We’re a site that does arts and culture commentary. There is discussion of adding more types of posts (previews, interviews), but they would not be significantly different on the back end from what we’re doing now.
I think those are the main issues arising from what Enkel said – let me know if I missed anything.
Nothing you’ve added has changed my opinion. For what you do, $10,000 is overkill.
I’m talking to someone else who wants to bid on the job. We’ll see what he comes up with.