Hi shandlon I agree with Richard and Tony. In any CMS its not the number of pages that the site consists of its the structure, number of templates, complexity, and functionality that determine the development time and therefore cost.
When it comes to templates it is a safe bet to work on 1 Day per Template (no matter how small it is - as there will be larger ones that will eat up all the built in fat). This includes each CSS and Javascript as well as HTML. Depending on complexity, add a couple of days for navigation build, a few (3-10) days for workflows, authorisations, deployment and testing, and a couple of days for support (you will be asked questions and asked for help after the handover so rather than try to bill at that stage - build this into your initial quote). Any additional functionality is hard to estimate without knowing what it is. As for the content itself, well the whole point of a CMS is that the client does the content... So if you are required to do content then again Richard is right - it means Draft/Review/Correction/Approval/Release and this in all companies I worked with takes a long time (we are talking days, although several pages can be done concurrently)... The key thing when working with the CMS is that once the templates are built and the project is rolled out a 100 page site can easily become 1000 page site in a matter of days at almost no extra cost (provided there is no requirement for new templates/functionality). A 300 page site that has only one page type will take 2 weeks to roll out. A 50 page site with 10 page types/layouts will take closer to a month... Hope this helps. On Thu, Nov 3, 2011 at 11:04 AM, Richard Hauer <[email protected]>wrote: > Hi shandlon, > > As with any CMS, it's more a factor of: > - complexity of creative (i.e. how much html/css/js; which browsers; > mobile?; IE6?; etc) > - number of page templates --> number of CMS templates (not a 1:1) > - abstraction of navigation from IA (the more abstract the more code you're > going to need to make it work; this is an exponential relationship) > - number and complexity of functional widgets (forms and the like - this is > the big ticket item) > > The number of actual final pages is rarely a factor unless you're also > responsible for the Copy, in which case you should count on about a day per > page, presuming you're starting from scratch, once you have accounted for > draft/review/alter/approval. > No that's not a misprint, of course there will be some easy ones and some > harder ones, but on averages a day is about right. > Anyone who says it doesn't take that long has probably never done it > before. > > So to your example, a 300-page site could take between about 2 months and a > year in man-terms. > > Regards, > Richard > > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] > [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of shandlon > Sent: Thursday, 3 November 2011 9:48 PM > To: RedDot CMS Users > Subject: Creating Esitmates > > I wanted to see if anyone has a base for what they do with projects that > are > being put in CMS and estimating the cost of doing so. I have tried to use > the base of an hour a page for the site knowing some pages will take next > to > nothing as they are just a repeat of other while the base pages and > templates could take more. However, when we get a site that has say 300 > actual pages that scares people away from doing a project. I know it is > hard > to say how much work it would take as it depends on several things but, is > an hour a page really a bad guide? > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "RedDot CMS Users" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/reddot-cms-users?hl=en. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "RedDot CMS Users" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/reddot-cms-users?hl=en. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RedDot CMS Users" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/reddot-cms-users?hl=en.
