This isn't my site but I would really appreciate some unbiased comments.

Where I live, the local Parish Council's seem to have embarked on a spending spree trying to implement their own websites.

This particular one for Langley, near the picturesque Leeds Castle in Kent, the Garden of England rather sums up what these small Local Govt groups are paying for with taxpayers money.

When reviewing it, perhaps consider usability, accessibility in the sense of allowing equal access to as many as possible. Did you like the menus? Relevance of images. Its aimed (or should be) at being the means of communication between the Local Govt and local public and perhaps promoting the area and businesses?

NB. I have no connection with this site and am not within this particular Parish so will not be offended or praised.

Also, what do you think they spent to get this site?
Of course I have my own views ...

official langley website www.langley-kent.org.uk

Thanks in advance

Simon

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Letting Agents, Solar Heating, Solar and Renewable Energy

Hmm! I hope it didn't cost too much - I was expecting something pretty basic, but I'm not enitrely sure what purpose it serves, other than to show photos of random people and their houses! I found the menu really irritating and confusing, there's html errors on the home page, and very little content - the parish council news consisted of the fredom of information act (probably not exactly what people coming to the site would be after!) and member's allowances pdf. Who knows what they are trying to communicate - they only thing I thought would be of any use to locals was that you could report a pothole - probably not something wirth an entire website!!

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The fuzziness of the words in the menus drove me batty.
OK, I am old, but I kept moving my eyeglasses around trying to sharpen the text.

The colored text on the medium gray background is very difficult to read.

I know the UK has different rules about accessibility, but this site is not for anyone over the age of 30.

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Dave Barnes
+1.303.744.9024
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sitting in my basement with my iMac

Thanks for the comments so far,

the site cost £6,000 and a further £100 a month maintenance.

Another local Parish Council Coxheath has already spent £1,000 with the same company "investigating" the development of a new site.

I have already written to our local newspaper in response to an early letter of alarm about the waste of money with these comments:

Websites and Parish Councils,

I would like to strongly support the views put forward by Tony Monk. When websites and Parish Councils are put together, the cliché ‘fools and their money’ seems apt!

Having looked at the Langley site, I assume it is the one that is only eventually found using the term "Langley Kent", I would recommend the Parish Council seriously consider where they are going with this awful concoction. I know it is always easy to be critical from a distance, but this website is poor both technically and as a means of communicating with the Parish. That this has apparently cost £6,000 of local taxpayers money makes it beyond a joke and rather serious. But what is wrong? Technically it is difficult to describe in lay terms what is wrong, but in a world where people expect a dynamic web experience as normal - facebook, twitter, forums, online maps, wikis - this site harks back to the 1990s. There is clearly no content management system which would allow the PC to maintain pages, so any change means more money spent! (is that the ongoing £100 per month?)

As to the layout and content, while I am sure the PC will defend it to the last £1000 of taxpayers money, what is it trying to say? The images, which seem to dominate every page, don't seem to have any point. I only saw one of Langley, the rest were just loads of people ‘hanging around’. The menus, well, apart from being seriously DDA (Disability Discrimination Act) non-compliant, seemed to be there as a challenge rather than to help the user!

As to what the PC could have done. Clearly they knew nothing about the web so why didn't they approach the public, perhaps ask for expert advice, almost certainly they would have come up with more than one person willing to work with them for free. They would certainly have got a better job than the site they have. Alternatively and as the previous writer on this subject commented, why not simply use the free resource provided by KCC!

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Letting Agents, Solar Heating, Solar and Renewable Energy

It really winds me up when people get away with charging that sort of money for something anyone could do better than with a bit of time and effort. Honestly - I'm not surprised you're angry! £6k!? They might as well as chucked on the bonfire in a couple of weeks instead - people would have got more use and enjoyment from it!

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Christmas Presents, Christmas Corporate Presents, Edible Gifts.

I'm reading this topic with very great interest as I have just been invited to tender to design a local Parish Council website... not too far from this one!!

All and any comments you make here will definately give me ideas when putting forward my own tender. I hadn't even thought of a figure as high as £6000 ! If they want to spend a similar amount of money, I'm sure I can build something full of relevant information, functionality and accessibility.

So... maybe I can ask for more specific pointers. Is there anything you would DEFINATELY want to see on a Parish Council website and anything you would particularly LOATHE to see? I'm really not into pitching.. although I know have will have to to secure the job. Are there any guidelines I should follow as I will probably have to attend a panel meeting to present my ideas.

A good post, thank you and very relevant for me right now.

Regards - JANE

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I can see why you might raise your eyebrows a bit, Simon! They got overcharged by about £5000!

It might be interesting to see who brought the page designer to the table, and whether they're related by blood or marriage. Government spending, all the way down to Council level, has gotten enough bad press recently that you'd think they'd be a bit more careful with throwing money away.

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Jane has asked what a Parish Council website might have. A good first step in the real marketing process. I'm going to put my own views and I'm really sorry if they don't fit in with a profitable business project.

To start with, the Parish Council will think that they are the customer. Far from it, the customer is ultimately the local taxpayer, many of whom will prefer to keep their money in their pockets so there is quite a task in providing something that is relevant, both for the effort and the forcible extraction of money - tax - from people who will be suspicious of the whole project.

Kent County Council already have a standard content managed website template available for Parish Councils for free! Is your proposed customer already using this and want to move on up or are they starting from scratch?

In the absence of a website I would just give them some free advice and say come back in a year once they are experienced in collecting and uploading content on the free KCC facility

No website but pressure to have a paid for one? Most likely this is going to be a vanity project, much like the Langley one where too much taxpayers money is sitting in the budget and needs to be spent!

Do they have experience in providing regular and relevant content? A fixed parish council website is a complete and utter waste of time and money (I repeat, taxpayers money). Very few PC websites are regularly maintained, usually only those that have come from a well meaning independent web aware person who has turned it into a hobby.

With the Parish Council on-board I would take a totally different approach than thinking - Build Website, take money, go away.

Why not take a more holistic approach and include overall web awareness, be the facilitator? Perhaps use the whole exercise as a promotional activity. You might get far more work from the community by engaging with them rather than being the company that has cost them loads!

Use existing basic technology that is freely available: forum, wiki, Google Calendar to name but a tiny proportion.

Is there any point in spending 1/2 the budget on 'design' - look at the Langley site, how many local taxpayers will go on and say, "Wow, this looks great" but its totally unusable!

A facility where local businesses can individually maintain their entries. A Google calendar that allows a single point for events which can then appear on all and every Google calendar owner that wants to link.

Lots of links, don't replicate existing resources, are there any locals with websites, blogs, images on Picasa etc. In fact is there an existing personally maintained website - the PC should aim to support them.

(The PC might well say that they must have full control over anything supported by the PC. This is utter and complete BS! What they are saying, is "I want my own toy")

What about a google apps account so that locals can have a local email address eg. jane@igtham.net then there is so much more opportunity for sharing the web locally.

Budget?? If I was a local and I thought the Parish Council were going to spend any money I would be banging my fist on the table at the next PC meeting. I did this when my local PC proposed spending £1,000. They backed off and now use the KCC facility. It is rarely updated so shows how little real interest they have in a Parish Council website.

Not, I am sure what you want to read. Sorry..

Simon

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Letting Agents, Solar Heating, Solar and Renewable Energy

Wow, £6,000 - that is a complete rip-off. Whats there is hardly worth £600! I notice, amongst all the other things that everyone else has pointed out, that there are also no meta tag keywords, no meta tag description, in fact nothing remotely SEO on any of the pages I can view. But then I suppose for £6,000 you just can't have everything.

I am sure any number of our forum users could have done much better for much, much less!

The menus are awful, the page layouts are truly rubbish - I would be wanting my money back if I had paid for this.

If I could get away with charging outrgaeous sums like that for basic web sites, I would be driving a ferrari and living in the lap of luxury now. I can only assume that no one involved in the purchasing process did any kind of research, due dilligence, or got any comparative quotes? Had they done so, they would have realised they were being taken to the cleaners.

Hi Simon

Thanks so much for your in depth views. These really help ... even though it could lead to no website build for me! I know they are not using the KCC facility. The site they already have is basic but about as useful as Langley's. On speaking to the lady put into the driving seat for the website, she knows NOTHING about the needs for the site, she doesn't even know how to set out a brief. All she has been able to do is call up a handful of designers (she has to have 3) to invite them to be on the tender list. She has spoken to me for quite some time and I've given her some guidance, but she says she's feels bad asking me to help her write the specificiation for the website, as I might not get the job in the end (she is a family friend).

As things have been dragging on now for a while, I might take some advice from Simon and offer myself as a consultant in the process.... that way earning myself some money (and I'm only interested in earning for what I actually DO!) I can then get paid to feed them all sorts of information about what they could and should be doing and also possibly guide them towards the KCC option with the option to input the data and teach them how to do it themselves. I wonder if they would want to spend money on consultancy? .... how would the taxpayers view that?

You've really fuelled my thought process now Simon..... I feel a desire to grab hold of this project and do it properly. It's a shame I actually know the lady at the council so well, because she's dying for me to do it, but she has no say and says she can't be biased.

I'll let you know if I get my foot in the door... then I might come back and talk to Simon a bit more - he clearly knows just what he wants from his PC site and there's no better place than to ask a taxpayer who cares.

Thanks all - Jane

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Hi Jane

Why not sit down with her and show her this thread..

Her council website could be discussed online just like Langely's !

good luck

Simon

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Letting Agents, Solar Heating, Solar and Renewable Energy

Great feedback, Simon, and I think you may be on the right track, for Jane... although it would seem to be too late for Langley.

It can be a risky practice, but I often use the "value added" model for my proposals. I detail the many aspects of my efforts, and be sure to call out those that the client might not think of. Monthly maintenance, for example, might easily be handled with a £100 budget, but identifying all the things I will do for that £100, will give it more value, and put the other bidders at the disadvantage of having to meet or exceed my criteria/cost. Just putting the Council on the spot to provide monthly write-ups/photos for inclusion, so as to limit my exposure. Coming in with a much lower front-end cost may be enough to get me the job, and the well identified maintenance and SEO efforts will be the gravy. Building a good site for one council may well be the inroad for other similar projects.

Of course, the risk is that they will simply beat up the other bidders to meet your specifications, and you won't get the job. But that's something that happens to us all, now & then... it's part of our cost of sales, right?

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A minor update to this thread. On further investigation, it appears that one of the Councillors on Langley Parish Council shares the same name as one of the directors of the company that got paid £6,000 for not that much! Now that could of course be a coincidence ... but!

For info, the so called web company appears to be HDR Visual Communications Ltd its one of those companies that started with 'printed' media and seems to think that migrating to web is simply treating the screen as virtual paper!

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Letting Agents, Solar Heating, Solar and Renewable Energy

Now tell the truth, Simon... you just don't trust politicians, do you?

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If I ever stop learning, let the wolves have my carcass.
http://doccampbell.wordpress.com/
http://cleanstreamwaterconditioning.com
http://carforums-online.com

Well, I have had the pleasure of working on contract within the UK Govt in IT.

After 3 years I was so infuriated by the waste and the constant failed projects that I wrote to the minister. Shortly after I no longer worked as a Govt contractor.

Sample conversation

Me: "We're buying hundreds of these and paying over £1,000 each when I can walk out onto the street and get exactly the same thing for £60 "

Man in ministry: "Yes, but don't worry, they're not coming from your budget"

Me "I know, but its the same taxpayers that are paying"

Man in ministry, after long pause "Just sign for payment"

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Letting Agents, Solar Heating, Solar and Renewable Energy

If it's any consolation, Simon (doubtful ), I've faced the same thing working with the US govt. Seems to be the nature of the beast.

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If I ever stop learning, let the wolves have my carcass.
http://doccampbell.wordpress.com/
http://cleanstreamwaterconditioning.com
http://carforums-online.com