Joomla 1.5 Website - do it myself or contract it out?

luckylucky

I wish to develop a poker information site. After having it recommend to me here I've decided to use Joomla 1.5 for the CMS as I have been playing around with it for a few weeks and though I don't know it well as yet, I like the feel of it. I've spent a lot of my time on it though and have not made massive progress and as time is money it's costing me.

I'm really between minds whether to go it alone doing this development or contracting it out. My major worry about contracting it out is that I'll end up needing to tweak so many aspects l that I might be better off going it alone. It might take me longer but at least eventually I'll probably have a site the way I wanted it. On the other hand it'd be good to just give it to an expert, and get something 95% of the way I would have wanted it, after just a couple of weeks. My other worry about this is that the developer(s) do a crap job and I'm back to square one, possibly wasting a lot of money in the process. I've already put this project up on one of the bidding sites, but I'm not that impressed with the bidders I've got so far.

Any advice on the best course of action or is there any well known respected poster here who is an expert in Joomla 1.5 who would be interested in getting involved perhaps?

EKRIUQ

Depends what you want this "expert” to do, is it to change core files and develop modules and plugins or is it just design and layout changes. Joomla is very flexible and plenty of possibilities but you have to know how to use them.

Getting a site designed from scratch can be very expensive when you have design and coding to do.If you think you can do it, go ahead and then get the "expert" to tweek the few things

luckylucky

BingoBongo wrote: »

Depends what you want this "expert” to do, is it to change core files and develop modules and plugins or is it just design and layout changes. Joomla is very flexible and plenty of possibilities but you have to know how to use them.

Getting a site designed from scratch can be very expensive when you have design and coding to do.If you think you can do it, go ahead and then get the "expert" to tweek the few things

Very good point. I've signed up to some template clubs already, some of them seem quite good, didn't find anything that suited exactly what I needed, but it would make much more sense to pick the closest thing I can find, try to tweak it a bit myself and then bring the 'expert' in.

Thanks a lot for the advice

EKRIUQ

Well, if your able to work with those templates, and change the css, images and have a knowledge of Html you should have no problems.

These a large amount of templates for Joomla1.0 but 1.5 will soon have as many.

One note, they say 1.5 is stable but I still use the nightly builds and find them very buggy and if working on a large site I'd use 1.0 just for it being more stable and the extra componets and module options.

luckylucky

BingoBongo wrote: »

Well, if your able to work with those templates, and change the css, images and have a knowledge of Html you should have no problems.
.

I am able to work with them but badly. Umpteen times slower than someone more experienced would do. Once it's up and running I won't mind spending time tweaking stuff when I'm in the mood but right now I just want the thing done asap. And I'm not the right person to do that. I think I will use an existing template and just get someone to tweak it though.

BingoBongo wrote: »

One note, they say 1.5 is stable but I still use the nightly builds and find them very buggy and if working on a large site I'd use 1.0 just for it being more stable and the extra componets and module options.

The thing is, it's joomla 1.5 I've been looking at for the past few weeks. So I don't want to have to familarise myself with an earlier version from scratch now again. I'm sure joomla 1.5 will get more stable later. I'm not expecting to, nor do I need to make a major splash straight away with this new site. For a regular business I can see why they would want to go with Vers 1.0 but for me personally I don't really need to play safe with joomla 1.0. I'd prefer to stick to joomla 1.5 as it's the latest version, hopefully a half year or so down the line when I know it better it will be a lot more stable.

Anyway thanks a lot again, really appreciate the advice.

DandyWebmaster

My biz tinkers around with Joomla, etc. In general it takes an awful lot of learning, time and dedication, often going for a template and adapting stuff like images to suit will be the best option.

We charge on the basis of hourly work, so for a fully W3C template you would be paying €300.00, but I know companies that work for much less.

nickides

good price, that's what's taken nearly all over in EU for Joomla! valid tableless xhtml templates.

The template clubs are pretty good but it is easier to build a new one instead of tweaking.