South African province spends $15.4M (140M ZAR) on WordPress site

Re:South African province spends $15.4M (140M ZAR) on WordPr... by jbail on Monday March 04, 2013 @11:36AM (#5318983)

I've seen many millions of dollars spent on websites, logos, and webpage designs in the United States over the past decade. In many cases, there was clearly A LOT of profit built into the price. $15 million is no doubt a lot for a Wordpress site. But, I've seen $6 million spent on a logo. Is that more or less ridiculous?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:South African province spends $15.4M (140M ZAR) on WordPr... by ajross on Monday March 04, 2013 @11:43AM (#5319013)

Surely it's no less ridiculous. But, to step on some touchy ground here...

The executives who approved the logo were very well-compensated tech industry leaders. And if they made a dumb decision then they deserved the finacial pain and community scorn they deserved. Shame on them. But the folks who paid for the blog were mid-level government officials in a comparatively impoverished nation with little local tech leadership or expertise to draw on. They got duped.

Our moral compass wants to draw different conclusions here. Which is the truth? Damned if I know.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:South African province spends $15.4M (140M ZAR) on WordPr... by fleitz on Monday March 04, 2013 @12:10PM (#5319169)

It's really impossible to tell without knowing more details, given how many times gov't clients change requirements it's easily possible that they were just wasting time.

Also speaking of lots of money for wordpress sites, what did AOL pay for Techcrunch?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:South African province spends $15.4M (140M ZAR) on WordPr... by mercurial on Monday March 04, 2013 @03:44PM (#5320777)

Apples and oranges. AOL was not buying design and developer time. They were buying talent and eyeballs.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:South African province spends $15.4M (140M ZAR) on WordPr... by offordscott on Monday March 04, 2013 @05:29PM (#5321477)

I agree. There could have been many other projects tied into the scope of work.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:South African province spends $15.4M (140M ZAR) on WordPr... by sunir on Monday March 04, 2013 @04:29PM (#5321108)

If you sign the checks, you're still responsible.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:South African province spends $15.4M (140M ZAR) on WordPr... by robin_reala on Monday March 04, 2013 @12:19PM (#5319223)

The $6 million for a logo was probably many months of work by a well-respected agency for a complete branding package. Not to say that’s not expensive, but when you look at it as a value proposition it could change your perception.

$15 million for a WordPress theme and server is bad value by anyone’s standards.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:South African province spends $15.4M (140M ZAR) on WordPr... by mac1175 on Monday March 04, 2013 @12:11PM (#5319178)

I work for a city agency in the US. I saw and heard such stories of insane tax payers' money used for affordable technology like adding responsive design to a website (talking close to $1m).

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:South African province spends $15.4M (140M ZAR) on WordPr... by gamblor956 on Monday March 04, 2013 @05:32PM (#5321490)

Responsive design for a government website, means, among other things, that it must be handicap-accessible and conform to screenreader guidelines, be viewable on browsers of constituents who may not have purchased a computer in the past decade (i.e., IE6), and also compatible with modern browsers.

This is a lot of work, especially making a website that is screenreader-accessible or works in IE6. You don't get to just abandon those visitors, like so many websites do today. Those people have just as much a right to access a functional government web page as people using modern browsers.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:South African province spends $15.4M (140M ZAR) on WordPr... by Fzznik on Monday March 04, 2013 @07:00PM (#5321916)

I just checked the site in question and it is not responsive. Being able to conform to screenreaders and older browsers is not difficult by any means and certainly shouldn't cost anywhere near even 1% of what we're talking about here. In my humble opinion.

[ Parent | on HN ]