Posted by gdzine on October 27, 2010 at 7:07am
A drupal implementation for small business website with features listed below:
- Home Page
- Home Page Image/Content Slider
- Blog
- Products
- Services
- Image Gallery
- Video Gallery
- Contact
- Shared Hosting
- Domain Name
Do you think all these features could be made out of $100?
Comments
Download this:
Download this: http://drupal.org/project/uberdrupal
Buy this book: http://tinyurl.com/2clrmgy
Spend the rest here: http://association.drupal.org/about
Get help here: irc://freenode/drupal-support
or consider adding a couple of zeros to your budget.
I agree with banghouse.
I agree with banghouse. Budget is a gross underestimate of what the above would cost. You wouldn't even get the home page for that.
I think this is the kind of
I think this is the kind of price something very simple should cost and is the whole ethos of Drupal and where it's headed, although a long way off at the moment.
Unfortunately the budget would only cover the domain, the hosting and an hour of a junior developer's time.
I am assuming 'products' is some text about the products and not a store, otherwise you're kidding.
By the way, I'm not offering my services here because if there was the slightest niggle or 'can you change that' then I would be losing out. As pointed out above it's something that could be achieved by spending some time learning Drupal if that's all the budget you can stretch to.
Short answer, yes. It can be done.
While I agree to an extent with banghouse and dbabbage, I think that another way of looking at this is what will this transaction lead to? If this transaction is a dead end, then as mentioned this might be underestimated (subjective, of course). If there will be more work after this, then there is potential to get more return later.
You're probably on the right track with providing more value than you receive (again, this is completely argumentative. perceived value is what the client is going to deal with). Another factor is how fast you could get that site up with those specifications. What's your comfort level with Drupal? How about your comfort with the chosen server/hosting?
You could slice this up in many ways. Maybe you only offer a handful of those specifications and let them know that further customization can be done after prioritized features have been dealt with.
Like I said, banghouse and dbabbage have a point about the budget but you'd be wise to consider the variables that make up the gray area.
$100? $100? Are you
$100? $100? Are you kidding?
Sure-- you always want to deliver value (I don't know about 'more value that you're getting paid for'). But $100 is in the ridiculous range.
Try $500.
Even at that level-- on the one hand, for the features you've listed, you're essentially volunteering to be someone's slave-- you give it away, the client will expect you to keep giving it away, and walk all over you. On the other, people who don't get sufficiently compensated, don't tend to delivered quality work.
Another way to look at this-- the firm I was previously at, thought of offering "starter" websites "pre-fab" with the lowest "stock" option at $500. (They of course never got this idea off the ground, because of a number or reasons).
Their major problem-- which led them to continually offer excuses for not having a paycheck as promised-- was that they continually bid far lower than the actual cost of producing what they delivered.
Then the firm tried to make up for that problem, by increasing volume :)
At $500, the firm was have been taking a loss-- probably at least $500-- given that they needed to pay employees and other infrastructure costs -- well, it would have been $500, if they had been paying their staff instead of offering excuses.
Now, if that $500 loss had generated a compensatory revenue down the line-- hosting, more business, etc-- then that would be fine. But you'd better damn well know the business and financial planning and be sure you're going to make it up.
In the case above, giving away under cost certainly generated more business-- that is, more chipmunks looking for a free meal. (Once you feed them, they're darn hard to get rid of!) But that business was again at a loss-- less than it cost to provide the service---
So good luck :) ! I think you can "win" if you offer a "stock" website, with set options, and likely a set number of themes, at $500-1000 plus hosting down the line-- you just replicate the base site. I've also seen four or five (likely more) groups attempt this, in various market sectors, and all of them crashed and burned, or burned, then crashed.
So good luck :)
~kwt
Is this a trick question?
I agree. Are you kidding? The cheapest decent hosting and domain I know of, costs $95USD for 1 year. That leaves $5 for your work. The only $100 sites I've heard of are stock templates, 1 page -- and the person does all their own work. And you know that's going to be a sucky site. So I'm left with wondering if gdzine is asking a trick question.
Ack - this kind of lack of
Ack - this kind of lack of knowledge and education on behalf of the client is what gets them in to trouble. Any time I've taken on a job for a small budget, it's ended up biting me in the end. Those clients are typically the ones who will keep niggling down to the last pixel.
To set out as a stock product is tough, too - because in the end, no one just wants "a website".
From a starting point of $100-500, how can the dev firm justify hourly rates later down the project when they want to add new features? They'd be paying 1/2 of the original budget to add a few simple features at a couple of hours per.
We've done a few similar sites for clients in various sectors. Some of them more or less cousins of the originals. You'd have to lock scope and "developer / designer time" to a bare minimum to make good with either of those pricing options.
When I think of a store, there's not only hosting, but SSL, gateway and processor fees. Those will eat up most of that slender budget.
Good discussion though!
-adam
Hi Adam, Niggling down to the
Hi Adam,
Niggling down to the last pixel? You got it... :)
As far as "just a website--" there are a lot of good marketing ops out there, which sold real estate or accountants or {insert domain here} websites-- on pretty modular bases, with changes and options extra.
If you look at them it's clear:
1) They started with reasonable capital and research, and new their market
2) They offered an original low price-- could be between $99 and $799-- which was supplemented by high hosting fees and the other upcharges.
Haven't seen it replicated with Drupal, as I said-- have seen people try to replicate, but largely, among other problems, they didn't start with either enough capitol, or enough domain knowledge.
~kwt
Building low end sites
I've built and hosted a fair amount of low end sites. Typically, I do this more because I believe in the cause I am helping than as a means of making money. Even with that, I try to take something like the suggestion above and break it into pieces that the organization can understand.
As an example, I would normally offer to set up the site as part of a multisite installation I have. I would tell them that I charge $100 for setup and customization, $15/year for the domain name and $5/month for hosting. it gives them a clear sense of what the costs are going to be. It is also based on the site being a pretty low traffic site.
Then, I tell them what parts could easily be done as part of the project. With an hour of setup, they would get pretty much stock configuration. That would include minor configuration of an existing theme, blog, contact and about half an hour of hand holding. The hand holding would include a simple explanation of how taxonomy works and how they might be able to use taxonomy to create pages for Products and Services.
Things like adding views to make the products and services look nicer, an image gallery would be extra.
I would also, for that price tell them to put their videos on YouTube or some other service and show them how to embed a video.
If they want a video gallery where the videos are part of the hosting agreement, and probably needs transcoding, I would NOT do it as pat of shared hosting. Video sucks up bandwidth fast. Instead, I'd sit and talk with them about their expected number of hits and try to scale an appropriate hosting agreement, but that would end up being much more, both for initial setup and for monthly hosting services.
I would also tell them that they shouldn't even think about having any custom features developed since it would probably be way beyond their budget.
As a side note, I used to run into these discussions a lot when people would try to decide whether to put up a brochureware website using Frontpage, or if they wanted something more sophisticated. These days, it's the same discussion, but with Wordpress.
That's how I'd approach this one.
Drupal Gardens could be a
Drupal Gardens could be a good soultion for this, so you can DIY with a pre-installed Drupal setup.
Although there are limitations in DG (no Date/Calendar as yet) and you cannot install your own modules, you can do all these things (unless you need ecommerce for the products).
You can also export your DG site if you outgrow it.
http://www.drupalgardens.com/
¿ are you netsperienced ?
♥ follow me @decibelplaces ∞
3rd party services like SquareSpace
I think as a freelance developer charging premium prices for custom development, if a client comes to me with the above requirements and a small budget, it's my ethical responsibility to recommend they use SquareSpace or a similar 3rd party service. I'm pretty sure all those features (except built-in shopping cart for Products) are there and cost at most a few hundred dollars a year. Aren't we doing a disservice selling Drupal services that we know are not cost-effective to our clients? (And shouldn't we focus instead on providing custom/premium development or design that adds a real value proposition?)
This thread is now about
This thread is now about automated drupal installs.
Please forward the link to this thread to your client before its too late.
--
Mike Nichols
My Own Soho, LLC
mike@myownsoho.net
www.myownsoho.com
There is hosted a Drupal
There is hosted a Drupal option: http://www.drupalgardens.com/ which is in free beta through next year (and will always have a free tier). You can also export the site code and host it elsewhere after the site is built. So, you can have a free Drupal 7 site today which is well suited for small businesses.
You will have to buy your own domain name, and you can then spend the rest of your money on paying a designer or someone else to customize the look and configuration.
note - I work for Acquia, so this is a not an impartial suggestion :-)
For $100 I would give someone a tour of Drupal Gardens.
Perhaps the explanation of how it work would impress them enough so that they would be willing to hire professional services for more than an hour. :-)
Low Budget
I have also done numerous low budget sites. Sometimes loss, sometimes gain. Heres what I found.
Hosting:
I do not offer hosting as that is the business of hosts. I did that years ago and it wasn't worthwhile. I could not compete with big hosts. I provide my clients with a link to the host I'm affiliated with and if/when chosen by my client, I receive a generous commish (not charged to client). This offsets my install fee. If they choose a different host I determine to roll cost into estimate or waive if the project is big.
Drupal or low budget template driven:
It's up to the client. My pitch is for Drupal as thats what I love to do. The time it takes me to configure for the clients needs is far less than the time to keep redoing their 'crappy' template site. My sell is that for a little extra $ upfront, I am empowering them to maintain their own sites down the line or get some kid at a bargain rate. Either way, they still need my services for additional features, customization, and updates. BIG PLUS, it winds up easier for me to build/maintain their sites down the line. It takes far less time to create new content in D than it does traditionally.
SSL/Gateway etc:
With small clients, I talk them into simply hitting paypal. Big clients have the other rhetoric in place already. It is not cost effective for small clients and if not maintained according to privacy laws, can lead to serious legal issues for web masters and hosts.
Rates:
I tell my clients upfront what my rates will be scaled by task requirements (ie. Low = enter products in cart or create a page, Mid=create new content types, views, rules, etc, High=DB or other programming).
Hand Holding:
Big gray area! I provide my clients with user docs for their config. As time goes on, I have built a big collection of docs where I simply add/subtract from my library and globally change the client name.
BTW - I push for Drupal/AcquiaProsper/Ubercart - still trying to come up with a blanket estimate for such...any suggestions?
Great tips
You have some great tips. Thank you!
Great Stuff
This is some great stuff you guys are posting! I can definitely see doing a BOF or lessons learned on this topic at a meetup!
Thanks A Bunch!
Tracei
Praying to the Drupal Gods!
I agree...
I'm thinking about putting together a MeetUp group for freelancers to discuss just these types of things... rates, training, payment, project management. Share ideas and possibly referrals. When you are working alone its good to get an idea of what else is going on in the world.
great idea
I would be interested in a group like this. Have you thought about just creating a thread for this, instead of a MeetUp? I am too far from Denver to attend.
.
Sounds like http://groups.drupal.org/micro-shops
Michelle
Not wise or realistic
You could likely not even find a year's worth of good hosting for $100. IMO Drupal development must always include performance optimization and decent SEO, and either one of those would come close to eating up $100 to implement. The kind of Drupal site you'd get for $100 is pretty much the same as the kind of car you'd get for $250. Not very good.
Your best bet is to use WordPress, which you can set up yourself with a very small amount of learning. Some nice business sites (e.g., Whole Foods) use WordPress.
Reliable cheap hosting (shameless plug)
$75/year (or $48 for a starter plan with one MySQL db)
The prices are low because I do not make much money on it, Reliable cheap hosting is a service I offer for my clients.
¿ are you netsperienced ?
♥ follow me @decibelplaces ∞
The hosting could easily be
The hosting could easily be absorbed into a multisite space, a small business site is not likely to take up much bandwidth or traffic, provided the video was embedded from a service like YouTube. The hosting needn't eat up a huge amount of this budget and contingency could be drawn up should for there being high level of traffic.
I've taken projects for 500
I've taken projects for 500 euro, twice.
The first one understood that they were getting a great deal and they understand that my hourly rate in the future will not be in comparison.
The second one was expecting everything for free and was trying to "niggle down to the last pixel".
I'm happy with the first project, it's a project I endorse.
I'm also happy with the second project since it's a lesson to never take projects for 500 euro again ;)
Kasper
It is possible
This question was also posted on LinkedIn where I have been participating in the discussion. This is a lightly edited version of my most recent post in that thread.
For those who are saying a site can't be built for $100, you're wrong. Last year I build 2086 sites for a single client. The initial rollout cost my client less than 15USD per site. There were non trivial sites, with around 200 nodes and about 10 content types at launch.
We cut some corners, all the sites use a common theme, which is a modified version of an existing theme. 80% of the content was common across the sites. The installation profile ran to around 3000 lines of code and interfaces with other systems for some of the initial data, such as the 400 000 user accounts created.
These days a fair bit of the installation profile could be moved into Features, Context and Strongarm. Back then none of these tools were mature enough to be considered for the project.
I think that there is some scope for an upsell centric business model using cookie cutter sites built using Drupal. It would be possible to make it all automated. Client comes in enters some basic information about their business, selects an off the shelf theme, pastes in the content for the home, about, products and services pages and the all important credit card number. Five minutes later they get an email with the login URL for their site. If they want features X, Y, Z, a custom theme etc, they pay.
I have very little interest in running such a business, but if you want me to help you build it and have a budget, contact me :)
Such a business devalues the skills involved in constructing a professional website, but the people using such a service are unlikely to pay for a professionally built site anyway. Rentacoder/Elance/oDesk haven't killed the highly skilled professional developer market, this is unlikely to damage the professional Drupal developer market either.
Interesting, but not really relevant...
Yep, your work on that network of sites is interesting, but your >$30k job on that work doesn't really suggest that a site can be built for less than $100, does it? It suggests that a large group of near-identical sites can be built for less than that each, if they are being built in bulk volume.
It is relevant
The point is if you restrict the options and built your infrastructure properly it is possible to build sites for $100 a throw and make a profit. For a basic "5 page site" platform (with up sell options), you could make your money back and more if you sell a handful of sites per week.
Gardens
If you're going to do cookie cutter sites, why not just charge $100 to lightly customize a Gardens site for the client and let Acquia handle all the hard work behind the scenes? :) $100 is roughly 1 hour of work. I haven't used Gardens but they claim you can be up and running pretty quick. Once you familiarized yourself with their tools, you could probably do quite a bit in an hour.
Michelle
I volunteer sites for orgs
I volunteer sites for orgs and causes I care about.
I host one high-profile site as a volunteer developer/webmaster http://faiththedog.info and the emails that people send us are reward enough IMO. Also FTD promotes animal rescue which I care about deeply.
Another option is to require the beneficiary of the site to "pay it forward" as I am doing with a small project for a lawyer - I am requiring him to do a certain amount of "pro bono" work and community service.
I also care about mental health wellness and recovery and consumer advocacy, so I spent one day putting together http://hobokenstopstigmaweek.info (and I got the .info domain from GoDaddy for $2.17!) I am now in the process of training Brenda to edit and and add content, using the wysiwyg CKeditor.
Low budget and volunteer projects are at the discretion of the developer. skwashd made a point that client expectations need to be managed.
¿ are you netsperienced ?
♥ follow me @decibelplaces ∞
There is nothing wrong with
There is nothing wrong with pro bono work, but a $100 for a business site at this time is a bit difficult especially with the domain and hosting costs involved. Even with an install profile which did everything, once you imported the content and trained the client, you're looking at several hours of work. In my experience when clients low-ball a project, they have very little understanding of what they are getting and are difficult to upsell.
It's already difficult dealing with IE6 compatibility for larger budget projects. Imagine if this client expected it.
--
Ron Williams
Definitely possible
I disagree about the $100 website being impossible. First, let me be clear that you most certainly will get what you pay for. Zero support, cookie cutter website, modules that might not do exactly what you wanted but that might be similar.
In the end this is no way to go about making that nice professional online image for a medium or large company, because it will reek cookie cutter, and will not be polished.
But there is a time and a place for these types of sites. My accountant's website doesn't look super professional, but I get a lot of good information from it. He has a staff of 1, so I am not turned off by how amateur the site looks.
I assume you will be doing it yourself. $100 will definitely NOT be a enough to hire anyone to customize the site for you.
Basically find a drupal template on a template site for less than $60. Be sure to find a template you like EXACTLY, as many of these templates on these sites were not made very well, and are not very customizable. Even the images are sometimes impossible or difficult to change.
My low budget guide, which I have used for a few non-profits:
1) Buy template from template monster - ~$60 http://www.templatemonster.com/
2) Get a cloud server from rackspace for $11 a month - http://www.rackspacecloud.com/cloud_hosting_products/servers
3) Setup Drupal, Install modules
4) Start writing content
If you can increase your budget slightly, you can even find someone to do step 2&3 for you, so that all you have to do is pick the template and write the content. Keeping in mind that you will get the template with no changes, and everything else simply out of the box. Not a good idea for a big company, but the perfect solution for a really small business.
Congratulations
Congratulations Rurri on the first completely ridiculous reply on this topic.
Your post made me quite angry.
First of all, if they can do 3 then they don't need to spend a cent beyond hosting!
Secondly, $11 a month? That means that using your $60 template they would be able to keep the site live for three months with your solution for $100.
Finally, "Even the images are sometimes impossible or difficult to change." How can any image in any Drupal theme ever be impossible to change?
Sorry to make you angry, I
Sorry to make you angry, I just think there IS a time and a place for a cheap website.
To your points:
1) True. They could use the default drupal theme and save even more money. That is a good alternative actually. Although I think buying a template can sometimes be a median point between being completely customized, and using a template that 1000's of people are using. Think a template used by 20 websites instead of 1000's.
2) True. My solution did not take into account hosting.
3) True. Obviously not impossible, but you would be surprised at how bad some of these templates are at following any sort conventions. Their goal is to make it look good on the screen you purchase the template from, thats it. Again, you get what you pay for.
Is this going to be a great website that will see them through any sort of growth? No. Will it get a small business with no money a quick and easy web presence to show some products and announcements? Yes.
Its basically akin to buying a static template online and putting up a website, except that at least this way when the business grows, they are in a position to leverage the drupal architecture their site is built on.
I think what I'm trying to say, is that a small non-profit or organization CAN use drupal, and get a somewhat custom look (template) without shelling out very much of their cash.
I didn't really get that
I didn't really get that angry don't worry! I just thought you missed the point.
One other point, even if you are doing it in-house, your employee's time is money. Taking the time to find a template that works for you (free or not) - that's probably a couple of hours' work on its own at least.
Totally Agree. Paying an
Totally Agree. Paying an employee to figure this out wont be saving you money either.
I envision this as a one man shop type of quick website. This is never going to be a viable solution for something bigger--but there is a need for these types of sites. Or should we shoo them away and point them to Wordpress?
Solutions for small businesses
I think that this could be a situation where something along the lines of features could be utilised to enable rapid production of sites, much like installation profiles, but with far more scope for all kinds of businesses. However, as of now there are only 113 installation profiles, some of which seem fairly outdated.
The solution I would suggest would be try to look for a hosting company which can use features to rapidly develop a site to your needs, and pay someone to develop a theme for you? Unfortunately I don't know of a business which can actually offer it, but if anyone else does then please do inform. What i would invisage is that they could have 200-500 different features sets which can enable separate parts of a site be it modules/views etc, you put them together as to your requirements and hey presto, you have a new site. All you need then is a theme and some content. You pay for the theme and then put the content on yourself.
This may operate slightly like drupal gardens, however, enable businesses to establish feature sets instead of having to worry about module etc.
Your accountant can and
Your accountant can and should afford a website... :)
~kwt
NO
i completely disagree. if one person does it, everyone will be expected to provide flash websites with all the custom modules they can dream of for $5/month, OBO.
if you decide to build an application to provide these websites for cheap you're crowd sourcing your revenue.
If a community member provides cheap websites directly, clients will expect the entire community to provide cheap websites.
My feeling is that software is free, people are not. If your clients want free software, tell them to use it. Resources cost money when they're not self-provided. Whether it's bandwidth, storage, food, electricity, warmth (or cold if we're talking about computers), a roof, education, code, etc.
-i'm speaking only to the humans now-
Stop providing these things on a 1-on-1 basis.
</thread>
--
Mike Nichols
My Own Soho, LLC
mike@myownsoho.net
www.myownsoho.com
NO MORE
Thank you c0psrul3!!
Its hard enough to make a living as it is. Too many people who are offering work don't want to pay. I often think of moving off shore so that I can work for $2/hr and afford to hire a driver.
Chop wood...Shovel Snow
Where? A driver in Shenzhen
Where? A driver in Shenzhen costs $350/mo, which is less than the car, but... $700/mo is 350 hours at those rates :) and actually living...
/me looks at price of beer at the cheap bar he's at in Cologne...
~kwt
Clarify your client's needs first!
I find it quite amazing that this thread has gone so long and far from such a vague initial question. It's a good discussion in its own right for sure. But it fully supports the theory that anything a client doesn't specify is 'undefined' and that means the developer may come up with anything or nothing to meet unspecified needs.
For example @gdzine made no mention of hosting. The question was "Do you think all these features could be made out of $100?" The language is not completely clear, but I'd interpret this as site building. Certainly no suggestion that hosting should be included in the price.
There's truth in all of the posts above, but many are based on presumptions that the client never stated.
I'm surprised that @gdzine has not had the courtesy to come back and respond to some of the very helpful responses to his vague question. The community (many of which are shouting NO! to this idea) have already 'wasted' time worth many $100's on responding to the client's initial question :-)
But the real first step should be to get more info from the client. Especially how competent he/she might be to do aspects of the work themselves. I know competent business people who have built their own sites using Wordpress and could probably do the same with Drupal. Great, they're smart guys and in a sense they've got the site built for $0 (cash spent - it's up to them how they account for their time).
But like many here I've also had clients who require far too much hand-holding and constantly ask questions or require you to explain everything multiple times and push you to "just keep trying another option or do a little more...". Some have been on small budgets, others on large budgets, but I've quickly felt that the project is just not worth the pain and my time has been seriously devalued.
Andy
"business case" for every expenditure
Now you're talking :) ! (Mimicry is a great form of flattery).
My point is only that you've violated some social customs here-- please be aware! -- and that your posts, while genuine, seem to be so general-- like your posting to so many groups-- that the question really isn't defined or reasonable. Reign it in a bit, ---
~kwt
Yes. Here's how...
((Can you say backlinks?))
Not that you really need the answer to this question, but for the benefit of those readers that can use a tip or two...
Buy your Domain Name and Shared Hosting from Hostmonster. $85 per year includes 'free' domain name, Cpanel, FTP access and simple scripts.
Install Drupal via simple scripts on your new Cpanel. Then...learn how to use Drupal. ;)
Coffee to keep you up while watching tutorial videos - $15
http://mustardseedmedia.com/podcast
http://www.drupaltherapy.com/screencasts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzrnXmpFWhI&feature=channel (be patient with tom,he's good.)
http://gotdrupal.com/
http://www.lynda.com (paid)
http://www.lullabot.com
See you on the forum!
It all depends...
@gdzine: I'm not sure you can be so conclusive. All of the required modules are freely available if you've got the time/know-how to use them, so it all depends on specifying the conditions of 'engagement':
- a price tag of $100 may not be unreasonable if the person asking the question is capable of researching and building a drupal site themselves (in their own time for free).
- a price tag of $100 may be reasonable if a developer is providing high-volumes of virtually identical template sites, probably using some level of deployment automation (e.g. Aegir). Customers must be prepared to accept off-the shelf theme and configuration or will need to pay extra for additional customisation work or configuration. Some of the modules have a lot of config. options, especially if you have to setup ecommerce and payment gateways for products. A lot of time can be spend just discussing and explaining options with a naive customer.
- I don't think themes are any more tricky than functional config. There are lots of great off-the-shelf templates available. It really depends where the customer wants to get 'fussy' and requires a developer/designer to do the work for them.
- I don't understand your point about "Open source the entire effort". Everything of relevance is already open source. A customer may choose to buy a commercial theme, but that's a big chunk if he only has $100 to spend: any developer will go hungry on this project :-(
Andy
Yeah, doing my own site was
Yeah, doing my own site was kind of how I got started in this business. I couldn't afford to pay someone to make my site, so I learned how :) It's not rocket science. I think more people are capable of it than they realize. Yes, I made some mistakes that might have been bad for a large business site, but for a small informational site there weren't a big deal.
However, I no longer do sites for friends for $100 like I did when I started because I think people who can't maintain Drupal sites, either themselves or by paying a market-rate developer, shouldn't have them.
The first website i made was
The first website i made was for $5 :)
the client got impressed and paid me extra $3
I can make this kind of website with all the contributed modules and themes for $100; It's an 8 hour job
www.delvelogic.com
Can this be thread be marked as spam now
Just got another Indian developer trolling for work.
This group should be for people who actually live in the NYC metro region or at least visit, imho.
Not spam
This topic isn't spam but I did remove the irrelevant groups.
Michelle
about cheap jobs and regional groups
I did find some postings from other countries in India related groups. After contacting those posters, I found they are looking to get a lot of drupal tasks done for prices in the range of $10 to $50 - that's extremely unreasonable even for Indian programmers and perhaps insulting for the drupal industry as well. However, nobody complained those postings as trolls.
I think this is a global village and we need to accept these effects even they are painful. With regard to IT outsourcing blame, I guess western countries lost more jobs(and suffered other losses) due to China's cheap manufactured goods - I don't know why they didn't complain that much when that happened!!
-Babu
Drupal Projects showcase: http://paramprojects.com/website/drupal-servicesprojects
Promote Drupal with Tshirts/merchandise: http://paramprojects.com/drupalstore
Trolls
@gdzine: I'm well informed about India as an emerging offshore Drupal environment. I'm also well informed about how trolls work. First you troll for $100 sites and now you call me out by name. Drupal is about much more than technology, it is about community and networking. You have failed miserably at both.
I'm escalating this to DO Webmasters as spam.
sorry gdzine
I clearly misspoke. You are definitely much more of a clueless n00b than a troll as 1kenthomas noted.
But once again you #FAIL to to listen to me and others who have asked you to repeatedly respect the social customs of this room. You clearly "don't get it". You are wasting people's time and certainly "endearing" yourself to the NYC Drupal community. Well done.
And the NYC community is my central point. This list is an extension of a real community who actually work and network together in the real world. For you to come here from halfway across the world and preach at people and call people out by name you don't know is, well, trollish behavior.
Have a "nice" day.
What makes this NYC?
I'm fed up with the way this thread has degenerated into sarcasm and abuse. I agree that the the discussion was started somewhat vaguely and naively, but I don't think that in anyway justifies the level of abuse gdzine is receiving.
Regardless of its shaky beginnings, this thread has brought out some very interesting discussions and suggestions and to label the entire thread as spam would be throwing out the baby with the bath-water.
And can someone kindly explain to me why some people think this thread belongs to NYC? I've only ever signed up to UK/England/London geographical groups, plus other generic non-geographical groups, so what makes this NYC and why would I receive it if it were sent on an NYC group? All of the groups and tags I see at the top of this thread sound generic to me, so if one of them is dedicated to NYC then it needs to name itself a bit more clearly instead of being so parochial as the believe nothing exists beyond the borders of NYC (which I guessing means New York City, but those using the acronym have been too parochial to explain).
Groups
The OP posted this into a whole bunch of irrelevant groups which have since been removed. One of them was the local user group for NYC.
Michelle
grabbing attention
Seems to me that OP wanted to grab attention by implicitly indicating that yeah, such and such requirement can be done (by OP) for $100.
Reverted
I reverted to the last revision. The original question may have been vague or spammy but it has generated a discussion that the participants wish to keep. The irrelevant groups were removed a while ago so there should be no more complaints about that.
Michelle
Gdzines post
I have to stick up for Gdzine here.
Regardless of his motives he has actually been a very helpful source for me on a few topics and has responded wholeheartedly to posts I have made asking for advice.
What's all the fuss about?
I don't believe most people go on forums out of the goodness of their heart but to give out and get back.
The problem?
I think that there a few issues here.
A lot of the hostility towards the OP is caused by those operating at the lower end of the market starting to realise where things are likely to end up. The "Aegir workflow" makes it very easy for people to start offering $100 site products using Drupal. For those operating in the sub $1000 market, this is a big threat as they need to justify their higher price tag. We all celebrate how Drupal is slowly killing the over priced proprietary CMS market, there is bound to be other victims of this success too.
Others were rightfully annoyed that this was cross posted to many groups. The cross posting was a poor choice by the OP. The irrelevant groups have been removed from the thread so the comments don't keep going there.
This was also posted on LinkedIn. In my experience there is a not a lot of overlap between gdo groups and LinkedIn, so the cross posting between the 2 sites is justified as it has generated some great discussion.
For certain segments of the market the "$100 Drupal site" is an appropriate solution. Look at Pagebuild, SubHubLite, Drupal Gardens and WedFul, they are all doing it already. I also am in contact with at least 3 companies wanting to target the same market.
aegir-based approach to $100 sites
Yes, I have started using aegir and I think low-cost website building solutions like drupal gardens, Wedful will open up new markets. Though aegir makes is easy to get started, to run a successful business using this model, one needs to overcome lots of challenges(both technical and marketing-related) especially when you need to scale up.
I have invested on a dedicated server and experimenting with this implementation now. So I have actually started taking this risk with aegir and excited to make something out of it. Perhaps, someone can start a new group for people like us.
-Babu
Drupal Projects showcase: http://paramprojects.com/website/drupal-servicesprojects
Drupal for retailers,third-party affiliate integration: http://paramprojects.com/website/shopzilla-ppc-advertising
DrupalCon session
I have proposed a session at DrupalCon Chicago on this topic - https://chicago2011.drupal.org/sessions/100-drupal-site. Voting for sessions is currently open, votes appreciated.
I'm also polishing my posts for a blog series on the topic - watch this space.
Blog series is up
As promised I have started posting my blog series on this topic. All posts will be be using the "100 drupal site" tag.
The first post identifies the target market and makes the case for why I think the business model is viable. The second instalment looks at resources and infrastructure. The third post will be published later today and covers the tools I think are needed to make this work.
Templates for Drupal
Now there are drupal website templates are available in market. You can buy them and customize as per your requirement.
Nice site
Nice entry. A site such as web hosting services reviews is really for convenience.
Above comment is spam. Please mark as spam...
The last 2 comments are Spam IMHO
I'd wager the above 2 are spam. Why else would you reply to a 2 yr old thread and push your template site. Earth to webtemplate : Templates are dead.