Bidding out a community Site

Community Site project...not sure how to bid.

[ids321]

I have a question about how much one would charge for a community site. Basically the site will have the following features.

1. updated news/rss feed from other news sites
2. post videos
3. post pics
4. create own user page
5. classifieds
6. forum
7. Instant Messaging
8. online store
9. local weather
10. users can get their own email address @WIDGET.com
11. user created blogs
12. flashgames
13. google ads/adsense account
14. find a WIDGET by zip code

The site is going to be quite large and would take some serious time to complete and implement. Obviously there will be a lot of extensive front end and back end programming and design/development going on.

I am not looking for an "exact figure" I am just seeing what other people would bid out off the top of there head for something with these features.

There is also SEO/Updating but that does not have to be included because that will be separate.

Once again I am not looking for an exact detailed figure just a ballpark. If anyone needs more background/information let me know!

Thanks in advance.

[jtara]

The first question I'd ask is "proprietary or open source"?

Can you use an open-source package or packages/components?

The difference between the two could be 100:1 in cost. I can't begin to comprehend the cost of developing that laundry list from scratch!

[ids321]

I was planning on using an open source community software which already has a lot of these features available to it but the nature of the "subject matter" or "widget" requires some out of the box thinking.

[prfb]

A huge amount depends on how fussy they are about presentation and UI.

You *could* build most of that stuff in, for example, Drupal. It wouldn't be exactly plug-and-play, but you could get most of the functionality from contributed modules and just spend your time integrating.

The trouble comes when you realize that contributed module X works, but only sort of, and the interface is awful, and your client doesn't want the "email this article" link in at the bottom of the node but rather in a block, and the block needs to be styled, and -- AAAAAGH!

So if your client is not fussy about UI (and I think that's foolish) then maybe it's not too expensive. But if they are, then it depends on exactly what sort of modifications they'll want and how easy or hard it is for you to do them. That depends on the system, the contributed modules, and your personal skill.

Sorry this doesn't give you a specific number, but hopefully these are some good things for you to think about.

[ids321]

The site would be left up to my discretion and I prefer to use open source. I will look into that and others on the market.

If I was developing it from scratch obviously the charge would be much higher. Perhaps since I am going to be using an open source solution I will just bid it like a normal site and see how that goes. I guess I just didnt want to undercut myself thats all and since I didnt know how to bid those I was in fear that I may be doing just that.

Thanks for all the tips/advice thus far. Keep it comin :)

[phranque]

i spent a day or two looking at movable type open source.
it really seems like it would be fairly easy to create your own content types with plugins and use it as a generic content management system.
mature product, large support community, etc.

[edit]doh! thinking MTOS, typed WP[/edit]