NCMHR Website pitch

Pitch 1 - Migrate the whole NCMHR site to Wordpress

The goal of this project would be to make all of the pages and content currently on the NCMHR website accessible and editable to anyone and everyone in the team using Wordpress as a content-management system. As there is no pre-built tool to get from Dreamweaver to Wordpress, this would be a bespoke, custom-coded migration focusing more on the structure of the site and the high-level design language and less on the details of any given page.

In the process, I would develop a simple, lightweight theme that would re-style the website to match modern design language and increase readability and accessibility - particularly on mobile. Shira, Oryx, Judene, myself, whoever, would be able to make updates, changes, and posts relatively easily. It is my understanding that the NEC website (power2u.org) is run on Wordpress currently, so the interface should be familiar to many on the team.

Cost: $4k
Hosting: 350/year
Additional content, pages, or editing for $65/hour

Pitch 2 - Design for Wordpress from Scratch

Cost: $6k
If the old site is judged to be too far gone, or in need of a total refresh, there’s always the option to start from scratch. I could build a site of up to 30 pages from the bones of the old, taking a more active and collaborative role in re-shaping the layout and function of the site.

I would develop a simple, lightweight style that would match modern design language and increase readability and accessibility - particularly on mobile. Shira, Oryx, Judene, myself, whoever, would be able to make updates, changes, and posts relatively easily. It is my understanding that the NEC website (power2u.org) is run on Wordpress currently, so the interface should be familiar to many on the team.

I recently completed the rebuild of rachelmillnertherapy.com , which can serve as a handy comparison and sample of my work.

Cost: $6k
Hosting: 350/year
Additional content, pages, or editing for $65/hour

Pitch 3 - a Wordpress One-pager

This is a bad plan, but it would be cheap and fast if the goal is just to have a quick and dirty “this is us” website.

This could also be added as a placeholder “work in progress, but this is the basics” site to either of the other pitches if speed is of the essence.

Cost: $1k
Hosting: 350/year
Additional content, pages, or editing for $65/hour

What is my suggestion?

I personally would recommend keeping all of the old content. The press releases from 20 years ago, the blog posts from god-knows-when, webinars from 2014… all of it. The SEO benefit of having all of these old resources is tremendous. Google rewards websites that link to and receive links from other reputable sites, and gutting the archives would break any backlinks you have accumulated over the years and could dramatically reduce your reputation in the eyes of the search engine. This should be avoided if at all possible, in my opinion.

For this reason, I ordered my pitches from what I believe to be most to least optimal. I believe that modernizing the site, while maintaining its long and storied legacy, is the best path forward. If you have any questions, suggestions, or needs that I haven’t considered here, I’m more than happy to talk through them with you and to make adjustments as needed. Shira, my wife, has had a wonderful working relationship with NEC for many years now, as have I. Let’s find a mutually-beneficial web solution for NCMHR together.