How many development hours to expect?

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mooflyfoof's picture

Hello,
I'm brand spanking new to Drupal and to this forum. I poked around a bit and didn't see anything posted on this topic yet.

I've just taken on a freelance project to create a newspaper (or newspaper-like) website for a client. So far what I know is that he wants to have different departments (I'm assuming things like "current events", "sports", "entertainment", etc.) and he also wants several different people to contribute content. He wants to be able to post different types of content: text, slideshows, videos, etc. Knowing this, Drupal sounds like a good solution.

Only problem is, I have no experience with Drupal. The client is wanting an estimate of how many hours this project should take, and since I've only ever built dynamic websites from scratch, I really don't know what Drupal development times look like. Plus, because I'm new to the system, there will be a learning curve for me and it may take me longer than an experienced Drupal developer. My rate is relatively low to compensate for my inexperience, but still, I don't want to rip off my client.

So my question for you is this: roughly how many hours would it take a moderately-experienced Drupal developer to create a news website like this? I know that this is entirely dependent on the specific requirements of the project (which I don't yet have), but it'd be great to know a ballpark figure for how long this kind of thing generally takes. I really have no concept. 30 hours? 100 hours? Less? More?

Thanks in advance!
Heather

Comments

take the time for fine-tuning

stdbrouw@groups.drupal.org's picture

I'm not all that good on estimating hours spent on a project, but there's one thing you should be aware of: putting together a decent and working prototype in Drupal should be fairly easy once you've found the right modules (and coding your own is pretty straightforward too if you have a background in programming), but "details" like theming the content entry forms to be more user-friendly, getting the interface just right, etc. will soak up a lot of time. So while finding the right modules for the media-reqs (vids, slideshows, ...), creating a taxonomy to get the sections right and creating some Views for the content display should only take a few days, you might end up with a project that takes a few weeks to a month anyway. I guess that's typical of any RAD-framework, but something to be aware of nonetheless.

A lot will also depend on how stringent the client is. If this site is to stick around for a long time that'll mean a lot more time will have to go to information architecture etc.

Thanks for the response!

mooflyfoof's picture

Thanks for the response! I've definitely noticed that with other CMSes that I've used in the past (namely, Joomla) -- that setting it up isn't too difficult but customizing it to get it to do everything want and look exactly as you envision? Very, very time consuming.

When you're estimating "a few days", "a few weeks to a month", are you thinking 8 hour days, 40 hour weeks?

Thanks again!

I've never been able to get

stdbrouw@groups.drupal.org's picture

I've never been able to get 40 hours a week that are client-billable, so I was thinking more like 30-hour weeks :-) Anyway, I'd recommend making an estimate that's on the high side: it will give you some breathing time if a time-consuming problem should occur, and it'll give you the chance to deliver something you can be proud of instead of racing against the clock.

Good call. I think I'm going

mooflyfoof's picture

Good call. I think I'm going to estimate 60-70 hours; I think that should be enough! Thanks again for your input.

*_*

beautifulmind's picture

First thing first, I strongly recommend that you use context module. Using which you can divide the site in many sections like sports news, current events etc.
If I were doing the project I would estimate 30 hours, that is without design and with design it would be 45 hours.

Regards.

:)
Beautifulmind

Thanks for the

mooflyfoof's picture

Thanks for the recommendation! I'll definitely look into the context module.

Your estimation is much appreciated. I'll be doing the design too (actually, subcontracting it) so I'll estimate on the high end.

Thanks again!

I am pretty experienced in

cirotix's picture

I am pretty experienced in building newspaper website. If you want a professional grade one, with the bells and whistles ("slideshow, video"), with UGC ("several different people to contribute") + a nice user experience it will takes a lot more the 30 to 45 hours.

I have not compiled figures from us but have a look at that :
http://www.slideshare.net/pjduvivier/drupal-experience-at-edipresse-medi...

Notice that the websites have been done by professional Drupal devellopeurs and see how many days the project have taken.
A small site with a simple them such as http://www.lesquotidiennes.com/
as taken 20 days (I don't even think that the design is included)

A small site made by us : http://informilo.com/ has taken sth like 20 days all included from none (ie out of the head of the client with no real documentation) to live (=on production on the live servers). And I considerd that we have been fast. And we do know Drupal pretty well.

If you need a less professional looking website, we've done (for our internal needs) that http://formation.rue89.com/ in around 2 days. Very simple (it only use 4 additional modules : admin_menu, cck, filedfield, nodewords).

All in all the estimation depends a lot of the client expectation.
I hope that it can help.


Damien Cirotteau
http://www.rue89.com

Yikes! Are you thinking 20

mooflyfoof's picture

Yikes! Are you thinking 20 8-hour days? As in, 160 hours? I just emailed the client an hour or two ago quoting roughly 70-80 hours; hopefully that wasn't a gross underestimate. This site will probably be somewhere in between a hyper-professional newspaper site and your Rue89 Formation site.

Thanks for all the information and examples!

The long haul

gregarios's picture

I'd like to give my input here, since I came to the Drupal site and tried to get this question answered 7 months ago and got no response.

I am (was) new to Drupal, and had no PHP experience, no MySQL experience, and no theming experience in December 2008. I did have a lot of Javascript and Perl experience, so I wasn't new to scripting or light programming. I was tasked with doing a newspaper website for our company, and finally finished it last week after starting in January. I put in about six 12-hour days per week the entire time, and during the process I learned, from scratch and trial/error: MySQL, JQuery, PHP, theming, and much more. I also spent about a week creating a couple bash scripts that converted the content from an old static site into importable, pipe-delimited content files, so the site is full with content entered since 2000.

So, from total complete Drupal & PHP newbie to newspaper site took me 6 mo working my *ss off.

I could use some critiquing from people who really know what they are doing.
See it here and tell me what you think: www.kpbj.com

I guess it'll be a work in progress even now since I'll be adding new features pretty much indefinitely, since tech keeps advancing. :-)

(PS: Unfortunately I only got paid for 8 hours/day, business days, but my job kinda relies on this site what with the economy and all -- the site was done "in house" technically, since I can't really call my boss a customer lol.)

Nice

briankennedy1's picture

That is a really solid site. One thing that bothers me while clicking around is the "outline" CSS property. When you click on a headline and it shows the big invisible box that the headline is in, it looks weird. Along with 0 margin and padding, I always set outline: none; as a universal CSS setting.

Re: Nice

gregarios's picture

Thanks for the great tip! I never realized that was an actual css outline. I thought it was just a browser quirk. Just took care of it. :-)

Few points that may can help you

mehuls's picture

If you are new to drupal sure it will be difficult for you to find out the estimation for any tasks exactly.
But following steps may can help you to get rought (ballpark) estimation of your tasks.

  1. Does it need any listing pages (reports) ? Blocks (small content on side bars etc ).
    For listing pages and blocks you can sure use views and check how much you can get ready and how much customization you need to do.
    By checking customization you can get general idea of those pages estimation.

  2. If they need to modify form check weather that is node/profile/comment form ?
    If yes check CCK module and availability of needed field in CCK.
    For customized field you need to create customized functions in your module. Which can take at-least 24 hours for new comers.
    I can say so because when i was new bee it taken

    If it is not node/profile/comment form you can not directly use CCK
    So you will need to do form_alter which can take more time as much as building new form.

  3. Check what are enhancement in features.
    For those features check drupal.org for contributed module and check out of box functionality of it.
    Make checklist of changes you need and go through module code, doing so you will get rough idea of estimation of change.

  4. Check what design changes you may need to do for that. CSS effects classes, customizations etc.
    You can sure get rough estimation of this by just inspecting structure of HTML.

Hope this will be helpful..

Key Notes :
Using Views and CCK can consume more time if customizations are very deep as you are at starting level.

Newspapers on Drupal

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