General developer forum

$65000 for a customized theme is outrageous if that is all you've requested!

My own pricing for a full customised theme would be more in the region of $1000-2000, with a more basic recolouring of an existing theme being even cheaper. (Please note this is given as a comparative figure and not in any way a tout for business as I am not currently in a position to take it on anyway!). Another way to look at the costing is to look at newschoollearning.com or another moodle partner and compare to their costs.

There is no need for Moodle to be text heavy - that is about the content development not Moodle itself, or even the theme. Moodle pages are as capable of having images, video, etc as any other web page, after all at the end of the day its simply a web page with content which can be generated in labels using simple HTML., as well as simple lists of resources and activities.

It sounds to me like you may need a good instructional designer rather than spending all that money on a customised theme - and for $65k you can probably get a fairly good one on a 12 month contract!

Richard

On occasion the OU has outsourced Moodle development work, and our experience was that there was a huge variation in quotes you would get for the same work. We would normally get three quotes for each spec, and several time there was a factor of 10 between the cheapest and the most expensive.

And, the extremely expensive quotes were rarely the best. If you want a good safe quote, go for one of the Moodle partners that specialise in doing custom development. Remote Learner and Catalyse IT are the two names I am happy to mention, because I know and like the developers there. I will let you decide whether that is undue bias, or a good sign.

Sometimes you can get a cheeper deal by finding a self-employed freelance Moodle developer (since they have lower overheads) but you have less guarantee of quality there, so you need to take more care selecting the developer.

The process of selecting companies to outsource work to was rather frustrating at times, and I had to vent in this blog post: http://tjhunt.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/how-not-to-sell-your-open-source.html . That may, or may not, be useful.

$65K does seem like a very high quote for a theme.

My guess from what you said is that their quote may have included redesigning your courses, and perhaps developing new visual course material, which could explain why the quote is so high.

If they are just strictly quoting for a theme (which only changes the look-and-feel of the site, but not the content), then it sounds very expensive.  Even at $2K per day, that's 32 days of work which is significantly more time than would go into a typical theme (more like 1 or 2 days for a typical theme).

Either way, you should try getting a quote from a Moodle partner, and if possible get some mockups and/or design notes so you know the scope of what they are going to deliver.

On the other hand, we here do not know the details of what the 65k offer actually covered. Michelle mentioned "customized theme" (which is sort of terminus technicus especially in this forum). But it's also possible it included the content, graphics, site setup, hosting and other related things. I just don't want to make Michelle feel like "hey there was a guy at the Internet who would did the same for $1,000".

I fully agree with Tim - check the Moodle partners and the Moodle jobs database.

Hi Michelle and welcome to Moodle.org forums!

Yes, $65,000 for designing a theme for any web software seems excessive especially when you consider that there's over 100 themes for free in the Moodle.org plugins repository: https://moodle.org/plugins/browse.php?list=category&id=3 It's also worth noting, as Richard alluded to, that it's relatively quick and easy to take an existing theme and make a few changes (a few changes in CSS can make a huge difference to the look a feel of a site).

And yes, if you're looking for an instructional designer, I think it's best to look for a specialist, ideally someone with an M.Ed. in distance education or an M.Ed. plus significant experience with working and designing online. Online learning and teaching theory and practice aren't rocket science, it's more complicated and difficult (especially for incorporating "social experiences"). And yes, with a $65,000 budget, you could hire in a post-grad to work part-time for a few months and work closely with your staff to develop something suitable and appropriate for your gallery's particular needs: I'm of the opinion that, wherever possible, it's better to develop and cultivate in-house talent, i.e. among your own staff, than to parachute in outside consultants and service providers for most elearning projects.

Like Richard, I'm not offering my services, just offering some advice from my perspective in the hope that it's useful to you... in the spirit of sharing