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Hi everyone,

I was wondering if you all could help me with the following:

My designers made a beautiful website in PSD format.  Instead of having my designer transfer the site to EE and implement the front-end/back-end development, which would be very costly at their current hourly rate, I would like to save money on the rest of the site development by breaking the development into specific tasks that I then could find freelancers to complete.

This is my first major site development (I’m acting as the manager) so I would like you all to comment/fix/add to any steps that I might be missing.  I am assuming that once one step / job is complete then I will not need to go back to the previous step.
Below is what I believe are the next steps (jobs) required to move a PSD to a final site using EE with facebook api implementation.  I’m building a news article site similar to what you see on CNN.com.

Step 1 / Job 1:
Build site layout in PSD (complete)

Step 2 / Job 2:
Convert the PSD to CSS/XHTML.
In this job, I would want the coder to do the following: Create Valid CSS & XHTML, Optimized CSS & XHTML, and make SEO-friendly XHTML Markup.

Step 3 / Job 3:
In this job, I would want the coder to add the appropriate EE tags, make templates and load the site onto the server.  What other tasks do I need to assign this coder at this step?

Step 4 / Job 4:
In this job, I would want the coder to add all the jQuery, JavaScript and facebook api integration.  I believe that after this step I’m done?

I appreciate all and any of the feedback.  I understand that I could just use a service such as PSD to HTML, but where is the fun in that?  Even though I’m not a designer or a coder, at least this process will help me understand how all these skills come together to create a professional site.  Please be critical with my thought process.  I’m probably missing a few details in the steps/job or even a whole step/job. I’m sure this post will be valuable to future people seeking a similar outcome. 

Thanks

Hi everyone,

I was wondering if you all could help me with the following:

My designers made a beautiful website in PSD format.  Instead of having my designer transfer the site to EE and implement the front-end/back-end development, which would be very costly at their current hourly rate, I would like to save money on the rest of the site development by breaking the development into specific tasks that I then could find freelancers to complete.

This is my first major site development (I’m acting as the manager) so I would like you all to comment/fix/add to any steps that I might be missing.  I am assuming that once one step / job is complete then I will not need to go back to the previous step.
Below is what I believe are the next steps (jobs) required to move a PSD to a final site using EE with facebook api implementation.  I’m building a news article site similar to what you see on CNN.com.

Step 1 / Job 1:
Build site layout in PSD (complete)

Step 2 / Job 2:
Convert the PSD to CSS/XHTML.
In this job, I would want the coder to do the following: Create Valid CSS & XHTML, Optimized CSS & XHTML, and make SEO-friendly XHTML Markup.

Step 3 / Job 3:
In this job, I would want the coder to add the appropriate EE tags, make templates and load the site onto the server.  What other tasks do I need to assign this coder at this step?

Step 4 / Job 4:
In this job, I would want the coder to add all the jQuery, JavaScript and facebook api integration.  I believe that after this step I’m done?

I appreciate all and any of the feedback.  I understand that I could just use a service such as PSD to HTML, but where is the fun in that?  Even though I’m not a designer or a coder, at least this process will help me understand how all these skills come together to create a professional site.  Please be critical with my thought process.  I’m probably missing a few details in the steps/job or even a whole step/job. I’m sure this post will be valuable to future people seeking a similar outcome. 

Thanks

trying to skimp like this is going to cost you much more in the future. 10 dollar freelancers do 10 dollar work.

Believe me, spend the money and do it right, otherwise you’ll regret it. I spend a considerable amount of time working for clients, fixing work that they tried to save money on, and virtually every time it costs them much more than it would have to just have it done right.

Step three is quite a bit more involved than just adding EE tags to templates.  Somewhere someone needs to look at your design, and the site IA, and figure out what the backend combination of EE channels, fields, categories, relationships and statuses need to be (what I call the “ExpressionEngine Architecture”). Often times there are more than 1 ways to implement in EE, so those options need to be looked and discussed.

Also - will any add-ons be required?  Will they be 1st or 3rd party, and if commercial who will buy them?

There’s also content entry - the developer will need enough content in the system to know that the backend is flowing through the front end correctly.

I also don’t see where your steps 3 and 4 can really be done independently. It’s all part of actually implementing the site.

Will the site have any workflow in the content management? Will there need to be other user accounts created?

Edit to add: I’d agree that getting an experienced developer involved would be smart.  Ask them what their preferred workflow is.

Step three is quite a bit more involved than just adding EE tags to templates.  Somewhere someone needs to look at your design, and the site IA, and figure out what the backend combination of EE channels, fields, categories, relationships and statuses need to be (what I call the “ExpressionEngine Architecture”). Often times there are more than 1 ways to implement in EE, so those options need to be looked and discussed.

Also - will any add-ons be required?  Will they be 1st or 3rd party, and if commercial who will buy them?

There’s also content entry - the developer will need enough content in the system to know that the backend is flowing through the front end correctly.

I also don’t see where your steps 3 and 4 can really be done independently. It’s all part of actually implementing the site.

Will the site have any workflow in the content management? Will there need to be other user accounts created?

Edit to add: I’d agree that getting an experienced developer involved would be smart.  Ask them what their preferred workflow is.

Thanks for the response.

I wanted to use Disqus for commenting and the facebook apps such as the activity feed and recommend buttons to make the site more personal.

Merging steps 3 and 4 makes sense.

Yes the site will have other user accounts so role management will be needed.  Could you explain what you mean when you say workflow? I’m assuming that these tasks would be implemented in steps 3 and 4.

———

From the comments above, it seems that I need to hire two separate freelancers? One freelancer to handle step 2 and the another freelancer to handle steps 3 and 4?

@JT Thompson You mentioned that I should not skimp of costs at this point in order to get the job done.  I agree with you.  I figured that by breaking these steps down, I could then find the experienced coder to properly convert the PSD to CSS / HTML.  After that I would then find the experienced coder to put the site into EE and do all the scripting / app implementation / etc.  You say do it right the first time, could you please explain what doing it right is?

Workflow = a process whereby content is approved before appearing on the site.

You pretty much have two needs—HTML development and EE development.  You may find one person to do both, or not.  I typically hire out the HTML work as I don’t enjoy it.