White Cat

Dear all, I am relatively new to the business of web design but I have built up a good portfolio as a freelancer over the last 18 months specialising in Wordpress built websites. I have my own pricing system that I am happy with, (although I probably have tendency to under charge) However most of the sites I build are no bigger than 15 pages and haven't involved anything too complicated. I have the possibility of getting a very good commission for a company that has a very large website that can reach up to 40 pages depending on the content. I will of course be reviewing the layout of the site to minimise the number of pages, and they have some more advanced plugin's to help run the company that aren't at the moment not incorporated into the site but linked to externally which needs to be changed. So my question is... for such a large site that will take a long time to finish once the content is reviewed, a new design is finished and then build of site is complete, so what would be the best practice for pricing and contracts? There may also be some re-branding work done in the initial stages such as reviewing the Logo. I think the website could take up to 6 months to build (but it is a pretty rough estimate) as I wouldn't exclusively be working on it 5 days a week. (The days I am not working on the site I am actually working for the company doing unrelated work) I just wondered if anyone had any tips on pricing larger jobs, estimating time frames and discussing contracts for bigger jobs with the client. I have a meeting with them in 2 days. Thank you for any advice in advance, D

Hello, I have just joined this forum today to seek some advice from you lovely people. I recently learned how to build websites using Wordpress and then a few of my friends then asked me todo there websites, so for a small fee I started doing this as a way to earn a little extra cash. I am using premium themes at the moment until I learn how to build my own and try to use a few plug-ins as possible. Quite often there are updates for the themes and plug-ins and not all updates go smoothly requiring me to spend time fixing any bugs and issues with the updates and clashes that crop up with new updates. This is exactly what happened to me today with one site and it took me a good hour to fix the various issues. I was just wondering is it fairly standard that Wordpress websites require (a lot ) of maintenance? I have built around 5 sites and have more sites to build. Is this where offering some kind of maintenance package would be a good idea so I am not working extra hours for nothing? Any advice would be appreciated. Daniel