Loomio
Tue 22 Apr 2014 11:31PM

Sciblogs crowdfunding refresh

TM Tim McNamara Public Seen by 17

Sciblogs is an excellent platform for connecting with researchers in many disciplines. The design and typography is showing its age a little.

What about a crowd funding campaign?

SH

Shaun Hendy Thu 24 Apr 2014 4:45AM

This would be great. How much would we need to raise?

TM

Tim McNamara Fri 25 Apr 2014 11:58PM

Unfortunately, I think the answer is "it depends".. my initial guess is around $5-6k. [edit: this seems low]

Low end

Tweak a pre-built Wordpress theme. We/SMC would do the looking. Someone else would adapt it.

implementation: 16h @ $80/h = $1,280

Risks

  • May attract junior devs
  • Contract may be too small for larger (more reliable) web firms
  • Difficulty to extend

Mid range

Custom-built look, would probably look somewhat generic. Recommend being very targeted with the desired look, e.g. pointing to medium.com/aeon.co/nautil.us/... or some other look.

design: 40h @ $100/h = $4,000
implementation: 20h @ $80/h = $1,600

Risks:

  • cost blow out due to difficulty to implement advanced design
  • vendor lock in

High End

$20k+

SY

Stuart Yeates Thu 8 May 2014 8:07AM

Do we know what proportion of readers use the website vs RSS and other forms of distribution? Web development and branding is completely lost on the latter groups

TM

Tim McNamara Thu 8 May 2014 8:06PM

No, I don't. This is a great point, actually.

Now that a converstaion seems to be starting off, it might be worthwhile to bring Peter Griffin into the thread.