Landed a freelance contract

[jstern]

Hey all, just wanted to express my recent excitement over the fact that I have landed a contract with a small company to complete their web site. I am more of a developer than a designer, but am looking forward to getting starting on their project.

 

Does anyone know of you use a free SVN service anywhere? Ive been looking around a little bit, but haven't found any to be free and still offer a decent package. I plan to get the engine rolling with this project and bring a friend of mine on board to start helping out, which s why i'd like a repository we can both commit changes / bug fixes to. Googles any good? From what I understood, it must stay shared to public, which i'm not very fond of.

 

Also, the site will be mostly informational & approx 7 static pages, and a small admin section for them to update news, events etc. I quoted them $1500 for these pages, but domain name, plus year of hosting. Does this sound pretty low-ball? The general manager accepted immediately, which made me second guess the number. (However I am friends with the GM, which might be the reason he didn't second guess the price).

 

My plan is to slowly incorporate additions to their site over time, when they can afford it. (Staff Scheduling, their customers get access to files etc..)

 

Any feedback would be appreciated. I already have a good vision of the site and think it'll be one of the more fun projects I'll do in a while.

[falkencreative]

Congrats!

 

Unfortunately I'm not really sure about free SVN services -- I know I have looked in the past. You might look at ht tp://ww w.sliks vn.com/ but I haven't used them and can't comment on quality of service. You may also want to check ht tp://bitb ucket.org/ -- it's not SVN based, but it has a good reputation and it's probably what I would use if I needed version tracking. (Or, since I am on a Mac, I would go with a combo of Versions ht tp://version sapp.com/ and Beanstock http ://beanstalka pp.com/). Beanstock has a pretty reasonable monthly fee, and it may be worth it.

 

I can't really comment on pricing your services... It really depends on your area and exactly what you are offering. For me personally, $1500 might be a little high (considering that the site is only 7ish pages, and assuming you are using a free or low cost CMS like MojoMotor, etc. to handle the admin section.) If you are planning to build the admin system from scratch, $1500 sounds more reasonable (but why reinvent the wheel?) I guess it just depends on the features that they need. If they aren't easily available in an existing CMS, building it yourself may be your only option.

[jstern]

Ive looked at some CMS systems, but i'm personally not a very big fan yet. Wordpress has some nice templates and layouts, but Ive had more problems with getting proper versions, and such than I care to take time on fixing. I'm sure its a lot easier than I make it out to be.

 

I plan on donating a site to a homebuilder friend of mine and using wordpress for that, so maybe I'll learn a few more things and change my mind then.

 

I plan on doing pretty much everything from scratch, using PHP - Zend Framework, even the admin panel. (Which wont be as eccentric as Wordpress, just a login and edit a text box to update a specific area.)

 

Thanks for all the SVN info, I'll start taking a look!

[Kyle Undefined]

I would use Google's SVN, it's good and easy to use. You can make it where only authenticated users can download or commit anything. The price seems reasonable, but it all depends on what you're doing with the site. By the way, congrats and good luck!

[administrator]

Congratulations.

 

... There good money to be made in the web business.