Help. Web site questions

[wdfifteen]

I know next to nothing about the present-day landscape of web site development. One of our recently acquired properties came with a newish web site. The previous owner paid $20k to have the site built. Apparently the code is proprietary or something. My people have access to it, but are unable to make changes, due to its complexity. The site needs a lot of work.

My options are:
1. Continue with this web site and pay the original developers a "change order" every time we want something updated. They charge $150 an hour. The site is an ugly POS and needs a lot of updating.

2. My graphic arts people make web sites for their churches, themselves, even some of our clients on Squarespace and Wordpress. I've looked at their work and they look great to me. They say they can do an new site in a week. We would have full access to make updates for free.

I'm of the old school "you get what you pay for" belief, so I'm thinking the $20k site should be a lot better, but I'm wondering about this. Is a custom $20k site really better than a building-block Squarespace site that will cost $2k? Or did the custom site developers just see this dumbasz coming and ream him for the site?
My wife can look at a woman's purse and know the brand and the approximate cost. I just see a purse. A Walmart sale item looks the same as a Gucci to me. Similarly, could someone more sophisticated about web sites than me look at a site and know the owner is a cheapskate Squarespace user?
This is for a high-end product and it wouldn't do to have users thinking we do anything on the cheap.

[stomachmonkey]

$20k for a site is ridiculous these days and no one should ever be sold proprietary code for a standard website.

PM me the log in details.

I'll take a look and suggest some options.

[flipper35]

+1.

I used to code them for a living and that would be a ridiculous price including inventory management and a cart. Unless they tied it into SAP. Then it is worse.

[rattlsnak]

$20K? Thats crazy, even back in the day! Give us the URL, let us have a look..

[motion]

I used to get $50K-$75K for website applications 10 years ago. I paid my coders $100 an hour back then, so cash gets burned pretty quickly. $20K doesn't seem that out of line to me. Take that job to an ad agency and it will be 5x that amount.

[wdfifteen]

Originally Posted by motion

Take that job to an ad agency and it will be 5x that amount.

One of my businesses is an ad agency, so I know what our markup is. It's not 5x, but it's a great business. Long dry spells with periods of great payoffs. It's not my cup of tea, but there seems to be a market for it and my guy there loves it.

[sugarwood]

Get it rebuilt for $2k.
Once you're satisfied, unplug the $20k site.
Sounds like an overengineered mess that benefits them, not you.

[sugarwood]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_costs#Loss_aversion_and_the_sunk_cost_fallacy

[steveo12345]

It really depends on what exactly the web site does. You can easily burn through 20K building a custom website that includes some custom functionality. On the other hand if it is just a informational website 20K may be way out of line.

It's kind of like building a house. You can build anything from a one room shack to a 10 bedroom mansion and anything in between.

[Brando]

Easy mode: Scrape the content, build a site on wordpress.

What type of site for this property?

PM me the web address and I can review it.

[stealthn]

Yes what's special about it? BI, analytics, what? You can build free sites in Azure now and add on other things for pennies. Unless it has some amazing tech, build it new.

[rattlsnak]

Are you going to have someone employed full time to update the events page and add new content or someone that pops in every so often to update?

[Charles Freeborn]

It doesn't matter how much something cost if you don't like it.
Wordpress is relatively easy to learn, very flexible and there a ton of ready to use and inexpensive themes (templates). I did my site in it. Charles Freeborn | Fine Furniture The theme is called MediaBook.

[robertocravallo]

I use JOOMLA, it is a bit more flexible for a website than Wordpress. Also free with a zillion add ons available. www.main11er.de is built with it.

[Holger]

Originally Posted by Charles Freeborn

It doesn't matter how much something cost if you don't like it.
Wordpress is relatively easy to learn, very flexible and there a ton of ready to use and inexpensive themes (templates). I did my site in it. Charles Freeborn | Fine Furniture The theme is called MediaBook.

(Woah! That is some nice furniture!)

[wdfifteen]

Originally Posted by rattlsnak

Are you going to have someone employed full time to update the events page and add new content or someone that pops in every so often to update?

We have a full-time content manager for the site. Why?

[wdfifteen]

Originally Posted by steveo12345

It really depends on what exactly the web site does. You can easily burn through 20K building a custom website that includes some custom functionality.

That was my basic question. The site came with the property and had no "instruction manual." I had a hard time believing that for that much money it didn't have some magic going on in the background. It doesn't, so we are starting from scratch with a new site.
I want to thank those who PMed me and helped me confirm that the site isn't really that special.

[Charles Freeborn]

Originally Posted by Holger

(Woah! That is some nice furniture!)

Thanks!

As for Wordpress - It does have some quirks that you'll have to learn about. At it's core it began as a blogging application, and it still has some inherent tendencies in that direction. For example you have to specify things like static pages and pages rather than posts, otherwise it will order your content chronologically, as done in a blog. This may not be a bad thing - depending on what you're after.
I looked at a couple of other web design packages such as Rapid Weaver, Freeway Express, etc, (I'm on a Mac) but my provider (Bluehost) is very Wordpress oriented, so I chose to ride the horse the direction it's going. They (Bluehost) has a whole youtube series starting from the very beginning on how to build a site in Wordpress, so that's a bonus too.
-C

[rattlsnak]

Originally Posted by wdfifteen

We have a full-time content manager for the site. Why?

There's s a HUGE difference on how a site is built on whether or not changes/updates will be made in house or by the builder.

[sc_rufctr]

I know someone based in San Francisco that should be able to help.

Details sent via PM,