SU Communities

Don't you have web designers and developers on staff?  Why should someone at SU have to go out and pay for a web site when the university is already paying professionals to be on staff full time?

Why should someone at SU hire anyone to do anything?  I'm sure there are others on campus who do the same thing.  In a not-for-profit university, resources are always an issue.

We would love to have enough staff in Marketing and OIT to handle design and development tasks for the entire university, but at the moment there are 3 full-time web designers/developers on campus (that we know of.)  Given the increasing role of the web in university communications and the decentralized nature of the university, there just aren't enough staff to go around.  Also, some web site owners at SU prefer to work with an independent web designer and there's nothing wrong with that.

It just seems that if the pitfalls of working with outside companies that provide this service are enough to warrant a series of articles, working within the university to use or more efficiently use existing resources seems like a better idea.  With the high cost of education that comes out of my pocket I'd rather see the school use what it's already paying for instead of adding extra costs.  If there is a resource problem then the university should be fixing it, not encouraging offices and departments to use their own budget to fill the gap.  Those budgets should go towards the students, not some design firm that may or may not try to rip the department off.

You really do bring up a good point, as far as university resources. However, the allocation of resources, as well as the need to add more is a very broad topic with many angles to it. It's entirely too large of a discussion to get into in a blog posting. The best thing I can suggest is to be sure your voice is heard on campus. Maybe if the university sees more and more demand for in-house web designers/developers we can make a legitimate argument for expansion.

Back to the blog posting, something to keep in mind is that this blog is not written with only faculty/staff in mind, we're writing for students as well as outside people who may read our posts. Many people have small businesses, or just personal interests and want/need a website to showcase it. We are attempting to help out by sharing as much information as possible. The way I see it, advice is always a good thing.

Also, guidelines for using freelance web resources could apply to pro-bono work (we are a non-profit, after all,) which takes the budget issue out if it completely.