An agency I'm on the board of is thinking of getting a new website, and wondering how much is reasonable to expect to pay.

Right now we've got an old ugly one, where all changes and updates must be done by the designer. Since we offer classes to the public, there are a lot of changes of dates and times and class names, but otherwise it hasn't been updated or changed in years - there are still names of teachers who left town five years ago on the Staff page. The designer grouses and complains every time he's asked to do an update, sometimes doesn't do them, (he says, for instance, that the old names can't be removed without days and days of work on his part) and for this we are paying him $24,000 a year.

This seems unacceptable, so we're thinking of firing him, closing down that website and starting up a new one. We have a quote for $1000 to set up something where our coordinator could do routine updates himself, and where we'd pay $60 an hour as needed if we wanted major changes. Does that sound reasonable to those of you who know something about this?

Updating information on a site isn't that difficult unless it's interconnected across many different pages on your site (like a web of connections). Sounds like the designer is just skating by on what he's already built and doesn't want to be bothered to upgrade because it's gone this long. Sometimes starting from scratch is the best and easiest way to go, especially if it's been several years and numerous updates. The code can get sloppy and fixing one thing may break several others.

Anyway, the last quote I saw for a simple website build was in the 1500-2500 range (this was several years ago). The 60 per hour is about right as well. IMO, you sound like you'd be much better off going with the new design even if it cost much more than 1k. Doesn't sound like, from your post, that major changes occur often enough to even really worry about that aspect of it. Since your coordinator would be able to do regular updates as needed, that's the most important thing.

I'd wait for someone more current in the market to check in before taking my word for it. I will say that I rebuilt a website using Wordpress from the ground up for a car club and it took some time and learning (I have zero formal education with HTML, CSS or any other programming) but I got everything set up and working. Didn't cost me anything but my own time.

Thank you, that's very helpful.

Alternatively, you could invest in a program such as 'Dreamweaver' and build your own website. Once that is done you could just pay for the hosting...

It's been a long time since I used/did anything like that and things may have changed; but it might be worth considering?

That looks something like Squarespace, I think. It's also something we're considering. Anybody done this? How hard is it?

If you were going to do that, I'd recommend Wordpress. It's a pretty easy content management system (CMS). Anything you don't know how to do, can generally be done as long as you search for the answer. The biggest issue I had with creating on Wordpress was making it non blog-like and not having any form of "comments" available. It took some work to find a theme that worked for me, but I did find it. The dashboard of WP takes a little time to get used to, but once you get the hang of it, updating content is a breeze.

agony, if you want to take a look at the page I built, let me know and I can PM you the address. Just so you can see what is possible with WP for a basic, no frills site.

I also use Wordpress for updating a website for our local sports club. I'm not sure who set it up in the first place but editing is super-easy and I've never had any problems with working with it