No CMS Bid
Think I’ve decided not to bid on the Municipal web site with their RFP as it stands now. They have a laundry list of tools that are wanted, which in itself is no problem, but the descriptions of the tools they are describing could be any of a dozen different interfaces and types of software out there. I went through the entire globe of Content Management Systems and did find some that would probably fit the bill, if there wasn’t anyone but web developers adding content to the site that is. There really is no simple CMS that does almost everything.
The only real way to do it is to build them a web site and create a custom content system for it with the extra software/programming added on as needed, but their budget is pretty low for that when you consider how much time it’s going to take to get some specs out of them and keep everything in scope. It’s a budget large enough to cover the IT time, but won’t nearly cover the training time and I don’t think I want to spend the next year going up to the Municipal building every other day.
Oh well, give ‘em a quote for the hosting and be done with it. Spent since the day before Xmas on it without coming up with a solution that wouldn’t put me in a hole and just can’t see one, so at least the hosting will get my foot in the door. There may be no one that steps up to create a CMS for them, so maybe there’s still some custom programming in the future from the Muni on individual projects for me, that would be more lucrative anyways I think.