EU presidency website costs €335k

Bizzman

It's a nice site, but €335k? €80k for hosting. I'd love to see the web analytics to justify that hosting! Any thoughts?

off.the.walls

335?? jesus christ

smash

At least this one's mobile friendly.

off.the.walls

its nice and all but not worth 335k

KonFusion

Who did it?

Was it Terminal4?

Bizzman

KonFusion wrote: »

Who did it?

Was it Terminal4?

Yes, that's correct

Graham

Bizzman wrote: »

It's a nice site, but €335k? €80k for hosting. I'd love to see the web analytics to justify that hosting! Any thoughts?

What are the specs for the hosting? Front-end servers, database servers, media/video servers, clustered, redundancy, firewall, ddos protection, connectivity, mail servers, O/S licensing, owned/rented?

We're not talking about hosting for Mrs Miggins Ye Olde Sweet Shop here, this is infrastructure for a public office.

€80k for hosting is certainly a significant amount but without knowing more I wouldn't like to guess whether that represents good value.

Same applies to the cost of the web site.

Fanny Cradock

If my experience is anything to go by then this project would have been divided and tendered to various companies in the member States. All of which increases overheads. Then add to this the various committees and the endless bureaucracy and you begin to realise that this isn't expensive.

Still, it would be nice to see where that 335K figure is coming from.

mneylon

There's a bit more information here:

http://thestory.ie/2012/12/17/department-of-taoiseach-contracts-in-relation-to-eu-presidency/

and here:

http://www.thejournal.ie/government-eu-presidency-website-720802-Dec2012/

Some discussion here: http://www.creativeireland.com/forums/showthread.php?t=34960

and here:

http://www.irishwebmasterforum.com/business-aspects-web-work/17005-irish-eu-presidency-site-2012-a.html

But they spent a LOT more in 2004

Fanny Cradock

The really funny thing is that the site not responsive. It's also broken in IE 7 and Opera. There isn't massive usage on either browser but after spending over 1/3 of million this is the type of thing you would expect to get right.

Bizzman

Blacknight wrote: »

There's a bit more information here:

http://thestory.ie/2012/12/17/department-of-taoiseach-contracts-in-relation-to-eu-presidency/

and here:

http://www.thejournal.ie/government-eu-presidency-website-720802-Dec2012/

Some discussion here: http://www.creativeireland.com/forums/showthread.php?t=34960

and here:

http://www.irishwebmasterforum.com/business-aspects-web-work/17005-irish-eu-presidency-site-2012-a.html

But they spent a LOT more in 2004

Thanks for those links. An Irish Examiner link here. Is it possible that €40,000 per annum represents good value for money for the hosting, or is someone really taking the p*ss?

Feathers

Fanny Cradock wrote: »

The really funny thing is that the site not responsive. It's also broken in IE 7 and Opera. There isn't massive usage on either browser but after spending over 1/3 of million this is the type of thing you would expect to get right.

The 7 year-old browser, that's meant to have a market share of 1–4%? To be honest, I'd be more annoyed if they did put more money into supporting it, whatever about Opera.

mneylon

Bizzman wrote: »

Thanks for those links. An Irish Examiner link here. Is it possible that €40,000 per annum represents good value for money for the hosting, or is someone really taking the p*ss?

Without knowing what the actual setup is ie. how many servers and how they're configured, then it wouldn't be possible to say.

MOH

€335k?

For only another €25k I'll do them a favicon.

gctest50

Bizzman wrote: »

Thanks for those links. An Irish Examiner link here. Is it possible that €40,000 per annum represents good value for money for the hosting, or is someone really taking the p*ss?

Have to love this bit :

"The website is capable of handling high volumes of traffic and has received more than 150,000 visits and more than 540,000 page views since its launch in mid-December."

http://www.irelandmetrix.ie/topsites.html - i'm sure there might be better stats , don't know much about it

"It is equipped to deal with resource-intensive material such as live-streaming of events and similar media-rich content, and has hosted 54 videos and numerous images of events in the first weeks of the presidency."

That'd be Amazon doing the video bit ?

and ....

"Mr Gilmore said it also been integrated with presidency-specific social media accounts, with the presidency Twitter feed, which already has more than 5,700 followers, embedded across the website."

omg twitter feed in a website ? what magic is this ?

It'd be far from cheap anyway you go about doing it though

renegade909

€335k and they couldn't even make it responsive. The design reminds me of the site Webfactory did for AIB in terms of layout - http://business.aib.ie/.

If you think 335k for a site is a lot then check out the $18m website for the Four Seasons - http://econsultancy.com/ie/blog/8676-four-seasons-unveils-18m-website