I'm drafting a budget for a project at work and I have very little experience with the current cost of web design. What would ballpark cost be for the design of a website with the following requirements:

- Basic site design, doesnt have to be particularly flashy, people coming to the site will already know what its about.
- Site needs to allow users to post articles/papers/information/photos. there must be a function to allow other users to comment on these articles.
- Articles/papers/information needs to be able to be classified into one of three categorizations with access limited to users of that classification. Think progressive classification: people with access to 1st tier will also have access to 2nd and 3rd. 3rd being publicly available info.

5/20/2009 1:36:27 PM

^ That can be done with just about every free open source content management system. All you would really have to pay for is adapting it to your business's graphic identity and some very basic setup. If you have someone who knows what they're doing, this is probably 2 days worth of work or less.

5/20/2009 1:57:19 PM

It could range from $5 from some Indian guy on oDesk to $1000+. It all depends on who you're working with. Your best bet would be to contact some actual designers directly and get a quote. Unless this is meant to be a job posting, in which case you should probably post more details.

5/20/2009 2:06:19 PM

Wordpress and some custom layouts. gogog

5/20/2009 3:30:45 PM

get a quote from http://www.o3strategies.com/

5/20/2009 3:34:15 PM

http://raleigh.craigslist.org/cpg/1153602383.html

They're looking for pretty much the same thing, and willing to pay $3000 OBO.

5/21/2009 12:34:20 AM

The prices are all over the place really. I've seen as cheap as $30 an hour for a local web designer and as high as $150 an hour. It gets even more inconsistent once you factor in the possibility of outsourcing. The good news is that there are several out-of-the-box content management systems that would do exactly what you need, granted they'd require a little tweaking, but it'll be a lot cheaper than someone building you something from scratch, definitely watch your ass as some individuals will try to build you a custom application just so you're forever tethered to them for support. I'd look into Drupal, it's SEO friendly and open source, so there'll be an abundance of free support in the form of message boards/whitepapers long after you and the original designer have parted ways. You can expect to spend around $2000.

5/21/2009 11:19:37 AM