Why pay for a web site when we could build it ourselves?

Building a web site yourself gives you the ultimate in flexibility, to create something that is unique to your organization.  Unfortunately you soon discover that you are limited by the skills, time and creativity of your staff and volunteers. 

If your organization was constructing a new building you would no doubt have plenty of creative ideas about what purposes it should fulfil and how it would look.  However, popping out to the local hardware store to buy a few bags of cement, bricks and a few window frames on the strength of this vision is likely to produce a somewhat different result! 

The role of professional architects, surveyors and contractors is to provide the expertise to translate your dreams into reality. The same is true of your web site; the vision is important but the expertise is what enables that vision to be realised.

Community web sites are not half a dozen pages of HTML that can be knocked together over a weekend.  The Endis system is the result of several man-years of professional development and experience in creating and maintaining online communities. You will be able to use features and options that are not feasible to develop for individual communities, but are available by sharing technical resources with several other organizations .

Your organization can spend less time reinventing the wheel and more time working on your core priorities.

You still get a web site that exactly meets your needs as you control both the content and the graphics (look and feel) that will make the web site your own.  The key is that the functionality of the system is already there for you.

Building your own web site may not necessarily be the most cost-effective route to take, as the cost of web development software and training courses have to be offset against the value of the end product.  Comparing static HTML based web sites to Endis is a bit like comparing apples with oranges when you consider some of the functionality of the Web Office and the administrative tools.

Finally, if you are rewriting an existing self-built web site, consider why you are doing so.  If you take the same approach, will you end up with the same results?  Maybe if you are looking to create something a little different from what you already have, you really should consider taking a different route to get there.

Related Resources 

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