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usual cost of a custom web design

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You can still create custom programming for an open source CMS. That is the core concept of open source and modules/extensions.

The benefit of building onto an existing CMS framework is that you already have the bread and butter stuff done for you. You don't need to bother with programming user logins, user groups, permissions, etc.

And you've got several thousand eyes on the core CMS so you're certain to have a more stable/secure system than if you did it alone.

Making money is how you market yourself and what value you really provide to a client. It has very little to do with your choice between your own CMS and an open source CMS. You could make more money with a closed system that only you know how to develop... until your client gets wise and goes to a more open system that has a larger pool of designers/developers from which they can choose competitively based on the quality of service/support and on cost.

I certainly was not harmed by moving from my own CMS to Drupal. Life is easier and much more productive/profitable when I have thousands of people that can help.
 
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6 years 19 weeks (what Drupal.org tells me since I registered)

I've used DrupalGardens.org for one day.

There's a lot more one can do with full control of your own server and your own Drupal installation but I was surprised how much could be done on DrupalGardens with the basic/free account.

The bar has been lowered for average folks to get an online presence. That means web developers/designers that expect to stay in the game need to raise their service level. I've seen many on forums drop out of the business because they did not choose the assistance of a CMS. They could not keep up to client expectations.
 
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Websites, at least those done professionally, cost 2K+. Depending on may factors of course and I find that most websites, at least for small businesses, end up costing between 3-5K.

Many clients DO NOT SEE the value in all the preliminary work and strategy and will find someone who will make them a site for $400. Then they come to me and say how disappointed they are and how the site doesn't do this and that. Then I tell them why. Lots of images and imagemaps, use of tables (although not as much anymore), poorly structured coding, no real site plan so its just taped together and on and on.

Then they whine again about my price and I ask them how long did this site take and are they happy with it? Usually took longer than they wanted and they are miserable with the final product.

Moral is YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR.

As for this CMS discussion, the current crop (WP/Drupal/Joomla) all do a great job from small to large sites. Depending on the requirements some custom coding has to be done but the bulk of it has already been covered. I do not understand why anyone would want to use a fully custom CMS. Unless you have the budget to ALSO create documentation for it and then maintain it properly.

Darryn Cooke
| Marketing and Creative Services
 
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i think the custom cms's do better in the search engines
 
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primorudy -- I respectfully disagree. It's how the output'd content is semantically structured and weather the pages are coded to current SEO best practices.

Beyond that your statement is factually inaccurate.

Darryn Cooke
| Marketing and Creative Services
 
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not if you are aware of SEO best practices, and it allows you to be more creative and come up with ideas for SEO that you wouldn't have thought of before
 
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not if you are aware of SEO best practices, and it allows you to be more creative and come up with ideas for SEO that you wouldn't have thought of before
Click to expand...

This can all be addressed through ANY CMS. Like I said it's how you code your site and set up your CMS. I can set up custom fields in a Wordpress Install for each post that i can call into any relevant tag or anywhere on the page for that matter. It's all the content's responsibility to be proper, semantic and structures properly.

I wish Google rewarded creativity.

Darryn Cooke
| Marketing and Creative Services
 
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execpt when you are doing things from scratch ideas dawn on you throughout the process that would not have dawned if you didnt put the work in
 
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What does one have to do with the other? Do all your products have 100% of the specs defined in the beginning? If that's the case then how do your products evolve?

Have you developed a site using any of the CMS out there. If you have then you will know that your argument is baseless and really makes no sense. For SEO THE BACK END DOESN'T MATTER. Search engines don't know what or how your data is stored. The output is all that matters. Since that is the case WHAT DOES ONE CMS have to do with the other as far as SEO???

The CMS has NOTHING to do with WHAT the product will finally do so I do not understand WHAT your argument is nor do I quite get

execpt when you are doing things from scratch ideas dawn on you throughout the process that would not have dawned if you didnt put the work in
Click to expand...

Using WP/DRUPAL/JOOMLA doesn't mean any less work on the strategy part. Just less work on the development side. SEO/CMS are mutually independent and have NO bearing on SEO.

Darryn Cooke
| Marketing and Creative Services
 
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I have been looking at Drupalgardens and the free website option. I see no mention of setting up a database, have I missed it or is that not available in the free version.

Keith
 
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darryncooke said:
primorudy -- I respectfully disagree. It's how the output'd content is semantically structured and weather the pages are coded to current SEO best practices.
Click to expand...
No it isn't, it never has been and probably never will be!

Several of the search engine spokes men|women|persons have stated MANY, MANY times that they really don't care about how a document is coded or how much code there is in the document, (the so-called non-existent "code to content ratio").

The statement from Vanessa Fox was "We read what we want, and ignore the rest"




Chris.

Indifference will be the downfall of mankind, but who cares?
Time flies like an arrow, however, fruit flies like a banana.
Webmaster Forum
 
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chris, what i meant to say and i think it was misunderstood was that for SEO the CMS doesn't matter. its whats outputted on the front end that counts. And how can code not count when we look at H1 and bold tags as well as title tags, etc.

Darryn Cooke
| Marketing and Creative Services
 
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Actually the "best SEO practice" is to ignore what the "experts" tell you/us/everybody is "what search engines want". SEs want documents that are created for search engine USERS not ones created especially for their indexing algorithm.

Sure SEs may use headings, bold, strong etc etc. But simply decause you use "semantic" coding does NOT mean your document URL will fare better for Search that a document URL that does not, and "SEO by numbers" does not work at all anymore. It never did work especially well, but the recent major updates have made sure it has had its day.

Search engines want the CONTENT served from the URL, and it really does not matter if it is in tables, lists, divs, sections or any other kind of element that yo choose to use.



Chris.

Indifference will be the downfall of mankind, but who cares?
Time flies like an arrow, however, fruit flies like a banana.
Webmaster Forum
 
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Chris you are absolutely right and I completely agree. Content is king. But not matter what the engine's say I don't believe that THATS all there is. And they shouldn't tell us everything otherwise that would lead to SEO anarchy. I tell all my clients that content and backlinks are the 2 most important aspects of SEO.

At the same time there are on-page optimization as well that ensures one page does better than the other assuming content is similar and just as good. im not talking about tables versus div but rater

Code: 
<a href="link.html><img src="image.jpg" /></a>

and

Code: 
<a href="link.html title="Site name homepage"><img src="sitename-logo.jpg" alt="Site Name" /></a>

Darryn Cooke
| Marketing and Creative Services
 
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what i am saying, is that when you code things from scratch, it opens up doors (because you have to think more) and allows you to think outside the box and actually "discover" SEO strategies. The best way to do SEO is to think ahead and think "What would Google want to do?"

I am saying this assuming you are already an SEO expert.

Also, it does matter how your site is coded when it comes to SEO
 
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primorudy said:
The best way to do SEO is to think ahead and think "What would Google want to do?"
Click to expand...
You do NOT need to think "what would Google do/want" you need to think "What do USERS want"


Think like a Google user NOT an piece of software, it's really VERY easy because you ARE a Google user.
primorudy said:
I am saying this assuming you are already an SEO expert.
Click to expand...
Hopefully you are not refering to myself as an "expert", while I have been studying Search and search engines for close to twenty years, I do not profess to be an "expert" and never will.

The coding does NOT matter, SE crawlers and indexers have to deal with EVERYTHING from hand coded documents, with perfect structure to documents created in MS Word or MS Publisher.

For example: page 'A' has been hand coded in perfectly structured HTML but is using "auto blogging" or "scraper" tools and then "spun" to generate the content.
Document 'B' is on EXACTLY the same topic but has been written (or rewritten) from human being. Sure it pretty much uses all the same words as 'A' does, but is a unique work. Should 'A' be shown to users in preference to 'B' because the HTML code is "neater"?
You're a Google user which one would you prefer to read on that particular topic?

Certainly there are some elements that emphasise or give more importance to the text contained within the tags, and elements that provide structure to the document, but having your document pass the "W3c spell check" does NOT give that document any kind of advantage for Search.

Google only want ONE THING, and that is to show the best results for their users queries. Where does the HTML code come into that requirement?


Chris.

Indifference will be the downfall of mankind, but who cares?
Time flies like an arrow, however, fruit flies like a banana.
Webmaster Forum
 
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coding does matter. website speed is taken into consideration. Tables and fieldsets aren't good for SEO and you are supposed to do external CSS and javascript

the SEO expert thing was a generality for everyone that would be reading it.
 
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This conversation is making me more confused than the people asking questions. I assumed most of this was known.

primorudy said:
what i am saying, is that when you code things from scratch, it opens up doors (because you have to think more) and allows you to think outside the box and actually "discover" SEO strategies.
Click to expand...

An open source CMS allows you to code things from scratch. That is what open source means! You are not typing these posts on a pair of coconuts and bamboo that you have fashioned into a computing device. You are relying on the existing work of Apple, Microsoft, IBM, AT&T, Xerox, etc to have created a platform to create code. A GPL CMS is no different. It is just another platform to get you farther than what you could do alone. You still have every option to hack up and create new code.

Keith said:
I have been looking at Drupalgardens and the free website option. I see no mention of setting up a database, have I missed it or is that not available in the free version.
Click to expand...

A CMS is a database! How is content managed otherwise?

The demo site above was created with the free version. I created a custom content type with 4 fields: title, description, license, and URL. Then I enabled the optional Views module to create the query that is shown at
 
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