Okay, I promised myself I wouldn’t do this because I know I don’t have time for this project, and then I went and did it anyway, of course. So I’m putting it here as much for my ability to reference it later as for your benefit, but if you find it interesting and useful, even better…)
I took a quick look at what I’m paying to operate my web site environments. That includes this site (chuqui.com) and my portfolio site on smugmug. The hosting setup I use for this site also hosts some private and small stuff, working spaces for myself and laurie, etc.
If I decide to do a redesign and do it on wordpress (a free, open source CMS), I’ll end up having equivalent costs to what I have now:
Smugmug: $150/year. hosts my portfolio and my (hah!) print sales ($50 profit in the last year or so. not significant)
Hosting: two VPS, one @ $35/mo for the web server, one @ $25/mo for the DB server, minus a 20% discount for having two. The bottom line is about $575.
So my hosting cost is about $725 a year. A renewal of the photocrati theme for the new release is $90 (less, probably because I think I qualify for a discount on the renewal). All my other costs (domain registrations, etc) stay effectively the same no matter what.
I use Dreamhost and VPS instances for my hosting. It’s not the cheapest option, but it’s been a frankly painless one and I’ll pay a little more so I don’t run into what I see my friends run into with their $10/mo shared hosting setups with companies that never answer their phones or email. The admin environment with Dreamhost is well implemented and only mildly confusing, which means I’m not spending much time trying to beat it into submission, and I love a minor money/time tradeoff. It’s more than met my expectations.
I did a quick comparison to Photoshelter, which is at the top of my list of sites to consider if I make a switch. Running my (100% redesigned) site on Photoshelter would run me $330 a year. My hosting costs go down, but not away, because of the “other stuff” I keep there — from $575 to between $300 and $350. I could likely shave that further with some thought, but $325 is a good middle number.
So the cost differences between running my stuff as a wordpress site and on Photoshelter is:
WordPress $725
Photoshelter (plus other hosting) $650.
Whenever someone asks me what to do about their web site, I typically tell them to look at places like Photoshelter or Squarespace ($288/year right now), and most of the time, they balk at the price. But when you start looking at hosting costs, suddenly it’s not such a bad idea. Often I see people find those $10/mo cheapie hosting setups and a free wordpress theme they found somewhere, and… and then later I hear them bitching about how slow their site is, or that it’s down again, or that something mystically broke and nobody will fix it, or…
Or in the case of you poor souls stuck with Livebooks, considering suicide.
TAANSTAFL, folks.
So based on my real world numbers, if I were to jump to Photoshelter, I’d drop my costs by about $75 a year. Not a huge amount, but significant. More than I’ve made in print sales recently…
Also, I could save money by pulling my portfolio stuff off smugmug and running it locally, perhaps with nextgen gallery. Not a bad option but I’d either lose print sales completely or have to handle them personally, and while it’s not a big income for me (to put it mildly), I’d like to think some day it’ll be BETTER, and I want the capability to leverage when I try to make it happen a bit.
But there are some unknown issues, too…
I haven’t confirmed their blogging system is up to what I want it to do, but a really quick look is encouraging. I’ve done a fair bit of custom work on top of wordpress and photocrati that would have to be moved or redone or thrown out. Fortunately, I’ve avoided writing wordpress plug-ins for things, and most of it is html and css geekery, so it should move with some encouragement.
I’d have to completely redesign my site. the current look and feel is nice, but in the photo shelter world it’d have to be rethought. (ditto, to a lesser extent, if I shift to the responsive look in Photocrati). My expediece tells me that doing the redesign properly AND migrating the data and fixing everything that breaks in the move is about a 3 month process given the time I’d have to give it. Three months I’m paying for both hosting services, so I don’t really see savings until year 2 or so.
But at first glance, sucking all of this stuff up, throwing it in a blender and aiming the open top of the blender at Photoshelter and seeing what happens looks like a reasonable option.
Later. Now, I have no time for this. (you, in the back of the brain, SHUT UP).
it’s easy to see the word “free” attached to wordpress and get blinded to the total cost of running a site like this, so every so often, it’s useful to stop, figure out what you’re really paying, compare options, and see if what you’re doing makes sense.
I love having the freedom of running my own show, but I’d love even more letting others handle the grunt work so I can go out shooting more and stay home doing admin crap less. And, if I can hand off that admin stuff AND save money, and do it in a way I feel is safe with a company I think is reliable and not going to blow up in my face in two years, even better.
And remember, if you aren’t updating your website every year or 18 months to freshen the look and content, and not redesigning it every 24-36 months to cover changes in capabilities and styles, you’re costing yourself sales by looking out of date or stagnant, and your site is probably full of security holes just waiting to be hacked….