Building A Law Firm Website

carlmango11

Just looking for some opinions on this.

I've been asked by someone I know to throw together a simple site for their very small legal firm - just a basic site to give a bit of contact info/web presence. I have some experience with Web Development and normally start from scratch but this time round people are suggesting I use a CMS.

Just wondering if people think this is a good idea; like would that be standard practice for professional developers for small sites like this? I assume they wouldn't build everything from scratch and would just build a template for a CMS?

Also if people do think a CMS is the way to go does anyone have any suggestions. I'm between Joomla, Drupal and Wordpress. I am comfortable with doing some coding if that'll allow for better flexibility. I'm a 3rd year computer student and am comfortable with PHP/JS etc etc

Thanks

EDIT: Just realised this should probably be in development? Feel free to move it Mods.

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carlmango11 wrote: »

Just looking for some opinions on this.

I've been asked by someone I know to throw together a simple site for their very small legal firm - just a basic site to give a bit of contact info/web presence. I have some experience with Web Development and normally start from scratch but this time round people are suggesting I use a CMS.

Just wondering if people think this is a good idea; like would that be standard practice for professional developers for small sites like this? I assume they wouldn't build everything from scratch and would just build a template for a CMS?

Also if people do think a CMS is the way to go does anyone have any suggestions. I'm between Joomla, Drupal and Wordpress. I am comfortable with doing some coding if that'll allow for better flexibility. I'm a 3rd year computer student and am comfortable with PHP/JS etc etc

Thanks

EDIT: Just realised this should probably be in development? Feel free to move it Mods.

I've done sites for clients in wordpress which have had good results.
its not just the cms. you also need to think about layout, seo,usability.

cormee

There's dozens of excellent law firm templates available for WordPress, by the sounds of the project there's no point reinventing the wheel, just get one of those.

carlmango11

Great thanks. Just wanted to make sure Wordpress or the likes is a good idea. Was afraid it was just a glorified blogging tool :pac:

sf80

I'd rate the application complexity increasing in the order Wordpress - Joomla - Drupal. Wordpress is the way to go if you need something simpler and importantly, if your client will be managing the content themselves.

cormee

If you're going to go the template route, make sure you change the stock images and some other small details like that, and make sure the client knows you're using an edited template.

JD RoX

If it's really small website - why bother with CMS? Lets face it - how often do small clients ask for updates? I mean more than changing few images here and there. You have to look at what's best option for you - faster, easier, better.
These kind of small projects are the best for experiments. If you haven't started yet with HTML5 and CCS3, try it on this one.

Main things to aim for are: 100% valid html and css, fully crawlable and beautiful

Trojan

JD RoX wrote: »

If it's really small website - why bother with CMS? Lets face it - how often do small clients ask for updates? I mean more than changing few images here and there.

I disagree with this based on my experience of CMS features being veryuseful even on the smallest of projects. Clients always want updates.

cormee

JD RoX wrote: »

If it's really small website - why bother with CMS? Lets face it - how often do small clients ask for updates? I mean more than changing few images here and there. You have to look at what's best option for you - faster, easier, better.
These kind of small projects are the best for experiments. If you haven't started yet with HTML5 and CCS3, try it on this one.

Main things to aim for are: 100% valid html and css, fully crawlable and beautiful

Clients ask for updates all the time! Teach a man to fish, and all that...

And, not sure about OP but for me anyway, the faster, easier, and better option would definitely would be the Wordpress/Theme route. That would take a maximum, of an hour's work for installation and maybe two or three hours customising and adding the content to it. Compared to say a day and a half for a bespoke brochure site.

JD RoX

cormee wrote: »

Clients ask for updates all the time! Teach a man to fish, and all that...

And, not sure about OP but for me anyway, the faster, easier, and better option would definitely would be the Wordpress/Theme route. That would take a maximum, of an hour's work for installation and maybe two or three hours customising and adding the content to it. Compared to say a day and a half for a bespoke brochure site.

Of course, if you use ready made templates and just modify few things, then it is easier. But if you deliver quality to your clients with custom mades, then cms won't be the easiest option

BarackPyjama

WordPress is probably your best bet. It's as fully-featured a CMS (and more) as you could possibly want for a project this size and it's easy to setup, configure and customise. Joomla, Drupal or other CMS's would be overkill for most small-medium commercial websites to be honest.

carlmango11

Thanks again guys. With the likes of Wordpress, is it easy to modify/create templates? I want to be able to fully customise the design of the site fairly easily. Like are they made with customisation in mind or would they be fairly cryptic/un-user-friendly? I'm talking about Wordpress specifically here I suppose.

cormee

carlmango11 wrote: »

Thanks again guys. With the likes of Wordpress, is it easy to modify/create templates? I want to be able to fully customise the design of the site fairly easily. Like are they made with customisation in mind or would they be fairly cryptic/un-user-friendly? I'm talking about Wordpress specifically here I suppose.

Unless you're very familiar with WordPress, in terms of customisation, I wouldn't advise editing anything except the images and the CSS.

Feathers

Trojan wrote: »

I disagree with this based on my experience of CMS features being veryuseful even on the smallest of projects. Clients always want updates.

Wish I could thank this again. Small clients are the worst — they always want updates, but have no idea of what your time is worth. They've already done you a great deal by giving you a few hundred quid, so why are you complaining now that you've to do a few dozen changes a month down the line? :rolleyes:

cormee wrote: »

Unless you're very familiar with WordPress, in terms of customisation, I wouldn't advise editing anything except the images and the CSS.

I'd disagree. If you're a 3rd year CS student with PHP, it'll be a doddle for you. I'd say strip back as much HTML as you like. Just try to get familiar with what the PHP variables themselves are calling & its object structure before you go hacking that too much. Esp on aggregated pages.

Re Drupal/Wordpress/Joomla, I'd say I prefer Drupal (more extensible) but has a bigger learning curve which isn't worth it for a brochure-ware site. Plus, Wordpress editor/admin console is much more user-friendly.

carlmango11

Okay so I put together a quick sort of mock-up to see if I could make something decent-looking from scratch. If that doesn't fly I'm gonna go with a CMS.

I talked with my sister who works at the firm and they told me they'd need practically zero updates so that won't be an issue. Even if they do need the odd thing changed I'll just do it myself for free because they're generally fairly generous so I'm happy not charging.

Anyway the verdict on the design of the from-scratch edition is pending over at Website Reviews: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056653136

:pac: