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Building a website for someone - ongoing maintenance?

TheReef

TheReef

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Sep 30, 2007
1,888
167
NSW, Australia.
Hi all.
I may be thinking of building a website for somebody, but am unsure about what to do with ongoing maintenance.

They asked me to be adding content to the site every two weeks or so, how do you guys do it - charge per change, include that in the cost price, build them an app to be able to modify the wording etc?

Also, is there anything else I should look out for?

This is my first project for someone I guess, I'm a little unsure. :eek:

Thanks. :)
 
I offer to do it for an hourly fee! I find if I use a set fee people will tend to take liberties with you. If they want more done then they pay....less done...then they pay less.

You should also mention what you're prepared to do and what not to do. Asking you to design new elements and change designs should incur a fee outside of what you charge for maintenance.

Well...that's what I do anyway! ;)
 
I am currently maintaining four sites, they are my only client and they where my first client.

1. I have spent the last 10 months taking online classes from lynda.com and VTC Online.


2. So, I have not really been out searching for new accounts yet and it is hard to try and charge them for every little thing since there was a huge learning curve when I first started.


3. Your boat sounds like the boat that I use to be in. Meaning that you are just starting off.


4. Here is my advice to you:


5. There are a ton of great free and cost editors out there. I will list them and their strengths and weakness.

A. Off Course there is Dreamweaver,

Strength - This is an all around very good web editor, a lot of features, medium learning curve.

Weakness - Cost Big Dollars.

B. Freeway Pro - Strength - This is what I learned on. It is very user friendly if you don't understand Html or CSS. It is just like Quark Xpress. If you know that program you will pick it up quick.

Weakness - If you know HTML, CSS, or any other programming language you will feel like your hands are tied. Also, it cost money.

C. Apatana - Strengths - This is what I currently use. They have a FREE open source edition currently. It is very powerful for writing all the web languages.

Weakness - Only one, you would want to know other web languages to maximize this editor.


D. CSS Edit - I combine this software with Apatana to create a really powerful application. This program does my CSS for me. There is a small price on this one.

E. I allso use Komodo Edit for really quick changes. They just came out with and open source edition.

F. The last tool you will need if you are building CMS sites or other language sites and want to test them on your computer is a program call MAMP.

If you are just starting out and not going to be building a full blown CMS site, I would recommend building the site using this program

http://cmsfromscratch.com/

This CMS will let you build your site with some simple pages they can update.

If you can help it, try to steer away from becoming the update guy and focus on Building, Billing and Moving On. Trust Me ;)
 
Thank you both for your replies! :)

OK so I'll guess I'll charge per edit then - that csm program you linked me too costs $ 400 US :(

macsrule, thanks for those tips, I'll try Apanta soon it looks pretty interesting!

I already have CSS edit it's really good, I usually build sites by coding them with TextEdit. I remembered playing around with Dreamweaver and NVU/Kompozer but it's really hard to get precisely what you want…do you guys find it much faster using a GUI package?
 
IMHO charge by an hourly rate on changes, that way you wont under cut yourself and the client is paying for exactly what you're doing.
 
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