Re: Web site time required

You are right to be careful here .. this is a minefield.

Treat it like any other project .. define the requirements upfront. 
If it is intended to be an active marketing tool, then upfront you
will have to get the resources (creative and technical) lined up for
keeping it fresh.

On Wed, 9 Feb 2005 14:32:22 -0500, Jeff Crosby
<jlcrosby@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> My company is looking at doing a website.  Since I'm the whole IT
> department, we're leaning to having an outside firm design and host it
> initially.

If you are responsible for it, I would recommend that you have an
entity other than the design agency host it.  There are thousands of
firms that host site for little or nothing a month.  Perhaps your
existing ISP does web hosting - you already have a relationship.

> I'm concerned about the amount of time it might take our personnel to keep
> it 'fresh' so customers keep coming back.  My thought is that the setup is
> just the beginning, it's just as much work to keep it up as get it up (the
> web site I mean).

Very perceptive.  The operative question is how often they (whoever
they are) are going to want changes.  Define the expectations up
front.. monthly, quarterly, weekly.  Don't settle for the "when
something changes" unless management agrees that means daily or
weekly.

> If an outside firm hosts it, does that save a lot of time?  If we host it
> ourselves, does it become a fulltime job just to keep it up and fresh?

Hosting is different than maintaining.  Hosting is basically having
the site sit on a server that responds to the web requests.  If you
host, you run the web server.  If someone else hosts, they run the web
server, but you ftp the site to them.

The design and maintenance are where the time is spent. is the upfront
time, the maintenance is the ongoing time, and every now and again the
company will want to "refresh" the look, which is some time.  If at
all possible, especially the first time, get a design firm for that
stuff.

If you are doing the ongoing work --  consider a content management
tool.  A good, light-weight one is called CityDesk from FogCreek
software.  A single designer is $300.
--> http://www.fogcreek.com/CityDesk/index.html

You can have the design firm do templates, look and feel, etc., and
use the tool to build the site based on those, and manage the site on
an ongoing basis.

-- 
Tom Jedrzejewicz
tomjedrz@xxxxxxxxx