Every time a customer asks you a question like “How much going to cost to make a website?” or “How much for a design?”, I got a problem answering and most of the time I say, “It depends…”. And most of the time I transfer the call to my senior colleagues or project manager.

Seriously, I don’t know the exact figure and I don’t want to talk about money matter first. Most of the time, I ask why they want the website for, what are they going to do with it, get to know a bit of their requirements and general site audience. Depending on those, you start slicing your time against the tasks and provide the figure. So there is no set price for a website.

Some people think making/getting a website is so easy as 1 2 3. May be so. But it depends alot on how well you want your website to be, what platform or technology to use and many many factors.

I got this article a few weeks back from a friend and I thought of writing about it. Things are so busy this week and just now I can get back to my deferred posts. There is a great article and a good discussion at personified.com : How much should a design cost?, that you should check out for more understanding of how they decide on the cost factor.

One thing to note is that, the author is talking about the design cost based on ready-made CMS platform such as (WordPress, MoveableType etc) and not custom made CMS. More like the whole website functionalities part is not included as it’s open source and free of charge. His figures are only on DESIGN part such as creating CSS, valid code and abit of customizations. Plus he is concentrating mainly on Blog design. For those it costs around US$ 1500 – 2500. That would be around Fj$ 5000.

A blog is quite different from a website in terms of functionalities as well as a requirements. Blogs are more like news post or articles based publishing whereas website are different nature such as ecommerce site, portfolio site, portal site etc. For those kind of site, the cost will go higher because of custom made functionalities and you cannot use wordpress for that (well you can, but not advisable…so I think).

For those kind of websites, you have to start from scratch. Requirement gathering, specifying technology to use, database design schema, layout design, the backend codes, front-end codes, graphics…etc etc etc. Every steps require time and time is money. So the more requirements you have, the more steps involved, the more time you need and the more it’s going to cost you.

I think I’m not the right person to talk about it as I don’t involve in cost decision making but I only involved for specifying tasks and adding time against it. But you get the general idea of how we charge for website design and development. So comparing our (Fiji) design prices with overseas (US – personified.com) prices, we are way cheaper. We make custom content management systems, we use expensive and latest technology – MS SQL + .Net platform. Ofcos’ there are quality factor to consider too. If I must say and be fair about it, we are a bit lack in design quality factor cos’ most of our sites are not valid standards yet. But it’s only a matter of time we improve our quality…ie. our developers’ responsibilities.

You should check this article for more detail explanations: How much going to cost to make a website.

I like the first comment. I must add if (($CMS != “Word Press”) || ($CMS != “PHP/Open Source”)) { echo “price goes up”; }

A friend of mine just now testing with me about gtalk letting you send offline messages. We just notice it today that it’s working. I did check many time before and gtalk didn’t offer offline message system and only offline voicemailing. But now it’s available. It doesn’t come with offline message window but it goes into your email.

I think they still working on it or…no public announcement about the feature yet.

I just upgraded my Firefox to the latest 2.0. Six of my extensions broke, including my favorite LoremIpsum and ScreenGrab.

I just notice, there is no “Extension” option under “Tools” but it becomes “Add-ons” and includes two tabs “Extensions” + “Themes”. And I don’t know where my connection settings go…oh it’s under “Advenced – Network” tab.

A bit of here and there changes I’m noticing… The browser tabs becomes a little glassier. Nice.

I have to upgrade my IE too. I downloaded other day and don’t want to install it since I want to keep it standalone for V7 and V6. So I’m still using RC1 Standalone for testing purposes.

I don’t know why IE installer file is too big in size ie. 15+MB compare to 5M of Firefox. IE download is definitely not the choice for people with bad internet.

Anyways I’m not gonna do any comparison between the two. This is just a remainder for you to upgrade your FF with latest one.

Download Firefox 2.0 here.

Just a breaking news yall. My beloved, the gang at WordPress, new creations and releases.

WordPress MU is an official branch of WordPress that is designed for managing and hosting thousands of blogs instead of just one.

Download WordPress MU

bbPress is forum software with the WordPress touch, and developed by the same folks. It has some pretty cool features, such as tagging, RSS feeds, Akismet spam protection, AJAX interaction, but the team focused the most on creating something fast and light. bbPress can power a forum with hundreds of thousands of posts with just a fraction of the load as WordPress.

Download bbPress

I don’t think I can check out WordPress MU…may be later. bbPress is interesting though, may be install it locally and check it out. You guys can test out too and let me know how it go.

Technorati Tags: WordPress MU, bbPress, Downloads, Releases, WordPress

In WSS, there is no default header or whatsoever, it only has “Top Menu Bar” with those main navigations like “Settings”, “Document Libraries”, etc.
My understanding of the “Header” is the image that go on top of the “Top Menu Bar” which span through out the site.

Header image is the first thing you set to customise your WSS sites. There are numbers of CSS files for you to play with for the look and feel of the whole site.

For this header part can be manipulated from OWS.css file, which sits at
c:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\60\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\1033\STYLES

Place your header image here: c:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\60\TEMPLATE\IMAGES

For WSS adding the header image tips, you must read this first two articles. #1 A Quick Way to Add/Change the SharePoint Header Area Graphic and #2 Adventures in CSS: Putting a banner image above the menubar in WSS

My version include abit of adjustment from the second article. The main difference between #2 and mine is that, #2 made use of second table’s CSS ie. .ms-bannerframe to apply the header image whereas in mine, I’ve use the first table’s CSS – .ms-main as you seen in the following code.

The image is added in .ms-main as followed. Once you add the image, the top menu bar still sit on top. To move the top bar down, you have to add margin-top space to .ms-bannerframe.

.ms-main{
background-image: url(“/_layouts/images/ats_intranet_header.jpg”);
height: 170px;
background-repeat: no-repeat;
}

.ms-bannerframe, .ms-GRHeaderBackground, .ms-storMeFree {
margin-top: 170px;
background-image: url(“/_layouts/images/topgrad.gif”);
background-color: #002d96;
background-repeat: repeat-x;
}

The method in #2 is mainly for default theme sites but once you apply it with different themes, the top-menu bar appear out of control. It is due to the image height set in .ms-bannerframe which is applied to second table and it acts as a background image for top-menu bar as well.

margin-top: 170px; this leave the space for the header image. The height of your header image should go there, ie. the one you use in .ms-main class. In my case it’s 170px.

.ms-bannerframe, .ms-grheaderbackground, .ms-stormefree {
background-image: url(sitelogo.jpg);
background-repeat: no-repeat;
border-bottom: 0px solid;
height: 72px;
}

Article 2 style effect: Theme1, Theme2, Default Theme

My Style effect: Theme1, Theme2, Default Theme

The disadvantage of my method is that, you need a fix image width. You cannot apply background color to it cos’ it will cover the whole page background as well. Also it doesnt work for individual webpart pages ie. a separate webpart .aspx pages that you created in document library. I’m yet to figure that out.
What is the advantage? hehe well it serves my purpose cos’ none of #1 and #2 work with my requirement.

This is just an extra note added to the first two articles, so that whoever with similar to my case can make use of it.

Thanks Ian for the articles.
Links: A Quick Way to Add/Change the SharePoint Header Area Graphic
Adventures in CSS: Putting a banner image above the menubar in WSS

Technorati Tags: WSS, Windows Sharepoint Services, Banner, Header, Menubar, OWS.css

A Hamm Ahamm Advertisments!!

It used to be that only Gmail users could use Google Talk but now anyone can sign up for Google Talk. (Gmail accounts no longer required)

Now anyone can Talk

Google Reader launched a new interface, with a bunch of new and exciting changes.

Discover the new Google Reader

May: my friends are complainin me, askin me whether i work for google cos’ i advertise too much about how good google is.
Jachin: Good software is good
May: true
Jachin: There’s not much out there so you just promote the good stuff… not your fault Google does well
May: very true

So…I don’t work for google but I plan to if I’m given a chance. Let just say, I promote good stuffs no matter which company they come from.
Thanks Jason for support and the links.

Technorati Tags: Google Talk, Google Reader, Software, Gtalk, Google

Hey check this out. This is very good offer for small/medium organizations. Google is offering (rather beta testing) for google application integration with your own domain. It’s kinda like subdomain system from google. You can offer customised google services like email, chat, calander with your domain.

Google Apps for your domain lets you offer our communication and collaboration tools to your entire organization — customizable with your branding, color scheme and content through the administrative control panel, and with no hardware or software to install or maintain.

Well I don’t think my domain can apply for that cos’ mine is personal and definitely not an organization type. But I think InternetFiji would try to test/make use of this for some of their customers. I’m sure inet will get an account if they apply for it. Well…just a thought, since I can’t check out for myself, Ian you mind setup an account for inet so I can play with it?
Anyways here are some facts.

Quick Facts
Cost: Organizations accepted by Google during the Google Apps for Your Domain beta period are eligible for free service for their approved beta users even beyond the end of the beta period, as described in the Terms of Service.

Languages:
Administrative control panel – Currently fully supported in English only.
Gmail, Talk, Calendar and Page Creator – varies by product.

Fully supported browsers

• Microsoft IE 5.5+
• Mozilla Firefox 0.8+
• Safari 1.2.1+
• Netscape 7.1+
• JavaScript and cookies must be enabled on all browsers.

Step 1: Sign your organization up

Step 2: Log in to the control panel and create your user list

Step 3: Select which services you want

Step 4: Activate your services

Step 5: Show your users where to find their new communication and collaboration tools

Sweet isn’t it? K try it out.
Links: Google Apps for your domain
Product Tour

Technorati Tags: Google, Applications, Domain, Beta