

Ask YC: Giving Clients a Premade Template - iamdave

I feel pretty strongly about this: it's wrong.<p>However I just nabbed a client who wants a two day turn around on a pretty detailed site (blog, forum, mailing list).  Sure it's possible to make <i>something</i> in two days, but it's not going to be functional, of quality and worth producing.<p>Matt here in the office kind of jokingly said "just give them a template".  At first we kind of made jokes about it but this is the only way it's going to get done.  Without going over budget, producing a site and configuring it for their business just wont happen in two days.<p>How do you feel about giving clients premade work?
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flavio87
Why would that be wrong? Think about the client. What matters most to him?
What is valuable to him? If he doesn't mind that someone else might be using
that design (someone in his industry is extremely unlikely), I would
absolutely do that. In fact I've done it already and it worked very well. Most
clients want a good, solid design. They don't care where it comes from. I
didn't have to lie to him, I told him I picked it off the Internet, and of
course there were some modifications to do.

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matthewking
I would tell the client that to meet time and budget constraints, you're going
to have to use a template and customise it to their needs.

If they agree, there's nothing wrong about it, otherwise you can have a
discussion about what's really possible in that time frame, and maybe slice
and dice until the expectations are more realistic.

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mechanical_fish
Drupal devs deploy "premade", open-source code and templates all the time.
Indeed, your client sounds like a typical member of Drupal's target market.

