Chattanooga To Get $300K Website

[JC]

The Chattanooga Shity Con'sell has accepted the "low bid" of 328,000 dollars for a new city website. Or the low, low rate of 85 dollars an hour for 3859 hours (give or take an hour or two
for computer glitches and overtime).

Don't be frightened, folks. Rico only has the peoples' best interest at heart.

www.wrcbtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=14959080

[Action!]

It does seem like a lot of money, but the city website we have now sucks big time.

[Bob]

Heck, I would do it for half that.... [grin]

[b33fj3rky]

Councilman Andrae McGary said, "I can't believe it's going to cost this much. My uncle's stepson's daughter's friend is really good with computers such and he's always playing the Google and the Facebook, so I bet he could whip out some site for us real quick. I already pay him ten dollars to mow my grass, I bet I could give him five more to do the interwebs. And can't we just get some space on the Geocities? Don't they give out free space no more?"

June Gwiffin, local techno-prophet, chimed in, saying, "The Apple IIe that currently hosts the city's internet Web site interactive page site is a perfectly good computer and I am darn tired of you crazy kids trying to interface your updates every five minutes or whatever."

[Justin Thyme]

Jun 23, 2011 10:04:09 GMT -5 Bob said:

Heck, I would do it for half that.... [grin]

Yeah, setting up the framework would be a snap. Pulling the updated content from all the various departments and working the updates into their workflow in a way that will make the website work, though, that's going to take some work. $300K is cheap.

[Bob]

Not really, its all PHP/SQL based now anyway. probably have to re-engineer a few of the back end engines but still.

build the new "look" in CSS implement the existing queries to pull the data from the departments as is. They can manage the content the way they do now, it'll just look different.

Granted it would take weeks to do that but $85 per hour?

[JC]

Let's put it into perspective.

$85 an hour for 3,859 hours.
That's 482 work days. Or 96 work weeks. Or 24 work months.
That's 8 hour per day, 5 days a week. Holidays and lunch hour not included in my numbers (but I'm sure it's billed to the city)

According to payscale.com, doctors make the equivalent of $38 - 46 per hour on average.

So, um, yeah, I'd say the city is either getting hosed or the ole' counsel made another backdoor deal. Wait! What am I thinking? They would ever do that.

[Police Moderator]

Councilman Andrae McGary said, "I can't believe it's going to cost this much. My uncle's stepson's daughter's friend is really good with computers such and he's always playing the Google and the Facebook, so I bet he could whip out some site for us real quick. I already pay him ten dollars to mow my grass, I bet I could give him five more to do the interwebs. And can't we just get some space on the Geocities? Don't they give out free space no more?"

June Gwiffin, local techno-prophet, chimed in, saying, "The Apple IIe that currently hosts the city's internet Web site interactive page site is a perfectly good computer and I am darn tired of you crazy kids trying to interface your updates every five minutes or whatever."

Now that was funny and apropos as the same time. I salute you, b33fj3rky!

[Justin Thyme]

Jun 23, 2011 20:29:19 GMT -5 Bob said:

Not really, its all PHP/SQL based now anyway. probably have to re-engineer a few of the back end engines but still.

No, the site is currently running RedDot by Open Text and it is written in ASP.net, using RedDot Query Language. From my understanding the new site will run on Joomla. There is no easy conversion of the way the current system fits in with the work flow and the way Joomla can fit into the workflow. The conversion is necessitated by the fact that (I believe) RedDot is a mature product and is not going to see any future development. RedDot runs on MS servers while Joomla can run on anything. RedDot runs on MSSQL while Joomla is based on MySQL.

Granted it would take weeks to do that but $85 per hour?

That's less than I would charge. Don't give away your work, even if it is for a community project.

[gridbug]

I worked at the City back when they had their own IT Department. Since their IT apparently can no longer handle doing a website, why not drop the old department and keep Maycreate LLC instead?

[Bob]

OK yeah I had forgotten about red dot and asp.

using Joomla, it took me about ten hours to create a functional site for a small company. (It took that long because I was pretty new to Joomla and was learning as I went) Granted the city's site would be a lot bigger I still don't see that kind of cost.

[Justin Thyme]

Jun 24, 2011 8:24:36 GMT -5 Bob said:

OK yeah I had forgotten about red dot and asp.

using Joomla, it took me about ten hours to create a functional site for a small company. (It took that long because I was pretty new to Joomla and was learning as I went) Granted the city's site would be a lot bigger I still don't see that kind of cost.

Without seeing the city's RFQ and spec for the website it is difficult to determine whether or not the $300K bid was out of line or not. I've used Gwinnett County's website a good bit and know that the services it covers are extensive and it is kept current. You can actually look at each city department as a different business with different needs. Rolling all of this into one website will be a time consuming project just dealing with the meetings.

[Justin Thyme]

chattanoogan.com/articles/article_203871.asp

[Bob]

I agree with that article, mostly the part about "its only money" If they do use joomla or one of the other CMS systems its still going to be a big job and one person from each department would still have to maintain their part.

Still think that's a lot of money to fix something that isn't really broke.

[mikeydokey]

Jun 24, 2011 12:12:02 GMT -5 Bob said:

Still think that's a lot of money to fix something that isn't really broke.

Well see Bob, it's somebody else's money.