Zikula Community

• **unknown user**
  
  

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  • Registered: Mar 16, 2002
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  Posted: May 13, 2004 - 04:20 AM

  Was thinking of hiring someone to do a custom theme that is XTE compatible.
  
  What is the going rate?
  
  Thanx beforehand!

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• MMaynard
  
  

  • Rank: Expert
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  Posted: May 13, 2004 - 05:37 AM

  Too many variables.
  You would be better off going around to some of the homepages of people that do the customs and asking for a quote.
  
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• HalbrookTech
  
  

  • Rank: Developer
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  Posted: May 13, 2004 - 08:08 AM

  There's going to be several factors, the biggest one being, I'm not sure if any of us who do themes and template->theme conversions have done a Xanthia theme yet. Personally I wouldn't be comfortable even bidding on a Xanthia theme that didn't have at least a 1 month due time, because I haven't had a chance to work with it yet, and would need time (Not that I'd charge actual development time, since a lot of the dev time would be getting to grips with the Xanthia engine).
  
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• **unknown user**
  
  

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  Posted: May 13, 2004 - 02:04 PM

  Yup,same here. I'll do one eventually, but not until its proven that Xanth will catch on with end users.

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• Lobos
  
  

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  Posted: May 14, 2004 - 02:19 PM

  I normally don't touch new technology until it is at least six months old. Also the main thing that keeps me with AutoTheme is the fact that I can design one theme and it will work with 4 CMS ;) Maybe not such an issue with custom jobs, but anything else... yes.
  
  Now about the going rate; it is impossible to say without knowing what you want done as every design is different and requires a different approach. Many people think because Postnuke is free they should be able to get a custom job done for say, $20. This is not the case as it requires a quite some time to design a theme that will work properly with the Postnuke environment and more importantly the main browsers.
  
  For example first you would need to create the design, this requires intensive correspondance with the customer and the designer; it can take many hours to come up with a prototype that is pleasing to the customer and workable in the CMS environment, many hours of stuff like: "the little corner graphic is too square can you round it some more...", etc, etc.
  
  You then need to code the design as a theme and if the intitial template is not created properly this can be a nightmare in it's self - anyone that has done monster template conversions can vouch for the fact that this can take many hours also!
  
  After the theme is finished bug testing begins and this can take quite a long time also - I have never completed a theme that is completely bug free, there is always something that comes up and needs to be fixed! Sometimes the designer has to deal with support queries for other things that don't have anything to do with the theme, eg AutoTheme isn't working....
  
  Putting this all together I have found that a custom theme design can take hours and hours and hours to deploy bug free. This is time and time is money so expect to pay a lot more than $20.
  
  In my opinion any professional theme designer that charges less than $US500.00 for a custom design is selling themselves way short. Actually $500 is cheap; get a quote from your local web designer and see what they charge for comparison (remember this is likely to be for the HTML design only as they probably wouldn't know what Postnuke was LOL
  ;)
  
  Kindest regards
  Lobos
  
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  -Lobos
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• **unknown user**
  
  

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  Posted: May 14, 2004 - 03:43 PM

  My favorite are the customers that want you to read their minds. Lobos is correct. Designing the theme isn't especially hard, but figuring out what the customer really wants can be a huge challenge.

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• HalbrookTech
  
  

  • Rank: Developer
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  Posted: May 14, 2004 - 04:29 PM

  Yep, what the customer wants is the hard part. My low estimate on any template -> theme conversion for my self is usally $120-150, about 2 hours of billable time.
  
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• Lobos
  
  

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  Posted: May 14, 2004 - 04:39 PM

  mhalbrook

  Yep, what the customer wants is the hard part. My low estimate on any template -> theme conversion for my self is usally $120-150, about 2 hours of billable time.

  
  
  Do you mean that you complete the conversion in 2 hours? Or that you only bill for 2 hours and charge $60+ per hour?
  
  I charge around this price as well, but I always spend way more time on it - sometimes many hours. Actually I have started to re-slice the templates as the HTML of many templates is so shitty that it is impossible to work with...
  
  Regards
  
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  -Lobos
  Professional PHP Framework Services: Concept, Development and Deployment

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• HalbrookTech
  
  

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  Posted: May 14, 2004 - 04:44 PM

  THe last template -> theme conversion took right around 2 hours. It all depends on the compelxity of the template. The first Template to Theme conversion I did ended up about 3-4 hours actually.
  
  If I discover that I've under estimated the ammount of work, then I will let the client know that it's going to take more than estimated. A simple layout is easy to convert though.
  
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• **unknown user**
  
  

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  Posted: May 15, 2004 - 12:00 AM

  Once I get an idea of what I want I may talk to one of you about designing a theme for me. The reason I want an XTE theme is so I can change the colors on the fly for the subsites I am implementing(or TRYING to implement)

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• **unknown user**
  
  

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  Posted: May 15, 2004 - 05:55 AM

  I have experiences all over the board. I converted a TM template the other day in about 3 hours - for a whopping $500. I've had others where I worked for hours and hours, but it was usually some design decision of mine that I later had to remedy once I got further into the conversion.

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• MMaynard
  
  

  • Rank: Expert
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  Posted: May 15, 2004 - 07:28 AM

  wow.. you guys are rocking it.
  I do customs for 75.00 a pop. :P
  
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• HalbrookTech
  
  

  • Rank: Developer
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  Posted: May 15, 2004 - 09:52 AM

  Unless it only takes you an hour, you're under valuing yourself. My base rate is $60/hr, but I tend to bid by the job, not the hour. I've still got to get my estimating process better, at least for Module development. The one paid theme job I had, I actually pretty much nailed the estimate perfectly, but the 3 paid module jobs I did, I grossly under estimated and should have made at least double what I did, 4 times really, but since the client in all cases allowed me to release the projects under the GPL to the general community, I gave them discounts as it was.
  
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• MMaynard
  
  

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  Posted: May 15, 2004 - 10:20 AM

  Most of my themes took me around 2 to 3 hours from start in Photoshop to finished HTML in AutoTheme.
  
  I guess I just feel bad because I remember when I started doing my first theme and I was shopping around for prices and I got hit with a few quotes like the above, then I got lucky and caught Ilyas before he got big and he did our first theme for 150.00. Now he is upwards of 500.00 like the above... :(
  
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• **unknown user**
  
  

  • Rank: Registered User
  • Registered: Mar 16, 2002
  • Last visit: May 16, 2004
  • Posts: 5

  Posted: May 15, 2004 - 10:35 AM

  I am new to postnuke, and have been searching for themes for my site. I have seen a lot of themes that have to use "AutoTheme" in order for it to work on your site(i could be wrong on that, like I said I am new). My question I guess is do you have to use this program, isn't there themes out there you can get without a 3rd party program?

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