Hi all, I'm new to this group. My university is getting into Drupal in a big way, but mostly through lots of small-scale projects -- just how many is anyone's guess. The ability to re-theme an existing site has yet to catch on with our administrators (i.e. decision-makers, purse-holders) but I am hoping that it will, and am advocating for that. I have also served informally as a consultant for departments other than my own to help them understand how to go about contracting with designers and developers.
One question that I am frequently asked is how much a new Drupal theme would cost. The answer is, of course, "it depends." However, clients can find that answer frustrating at best and disingenuous at worst. That's because they don't understand the process. I am trying to make the process more transparent, so academia gets better results, and Drupal Themers get more work. Everybody wins.
I would like to pose the following questions to the Drupal Theming community, and invite each of you to answer me directly via email, in addition to any conversation in this space. Doing so would put you under consideration for future contracts. (Please include links to examples of your work and your d.o username.)
How many "developer hours" do you estimate for:
- an existing Drupal site/theme audit
- original design comp creation (including 3-rounds of review/revision)
- conversion of comps into a Drupal6 Theme (with 3 rounds of review/revision of Theme functionality)
- #1-3, PLUS deployment and debugging
For the purposes of this poll, you can assume a ideal scenario in which the client in question has no issues with their core code or modules, that this is just a theming assignment. To get a sense of how many distinct pages, or page types you would need to theme, take a look at any academic department (e.g. English) or research center (e..g. Humanities Center) at any top research university (Oxford, Stanford, Duke, etc.).
Best Wishes,
Zach Chandler
Stanford University
zchandler@stanford.edu
Comments
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This is really a very difficult thing to quantify. From my own experience the cheapest custom theme I have done was around 300 Euro, the most around 3500 Euro—quite a difference.
You may be better of hiring someone to do this, to look at your specific set of sites and produce a report for you. You'll get a much better picture of the real costs.