The simple fact is: Customisation and configuration is expensive if you have to pay for it. By making use of pre-configured packages, Gate Seven make TYPO3 available to community organisations at minimal cost.

Keeping the costs down

There are plenty of ways in which a small organisation can get a web site without spending too much. The problem is that virtually all of these are directed at producing a web presence - effectively a brochure - for very small businesses or individuals, and they do not go very far in the direction of creating, supporting and empowering a community.

As the previous sections demonstrate, what you need to achieve that objective is something like a TYPO3 web site.

The problem is the cost of getting such a thing set up - £10,000 is a pretty average quotation for the sort of site we are talking about, developed from scratch.

Where do the costs come from?

As with skills, the same list applies to where costs come from, with some additions:

1. creating the designs for the main web-site and for the output of extensions
2. implementing the design or designs as templates and connecting them to the site
3. adding functions in the form of extensions
4. the development of additional extensions for functions essential to the organisation, but not currently programmed
5. support for management of site roles, for both front-end and back-end users
6. adding content to the site
7. hosting costs
8. The cost of the software needed too run the site
9. The cost of the software needed to update the site

How to reduce costs?

The obvious way to reduce costs is to do as much as you can yourself, and if you cannot do some things yourself, to look for something that is available either free, or at minimal cost, that will fulfil most of what you want and need.

You can then pay for the minimum of professional work to get you to the stage where you can concentrate, firstly on the content, and secondly, on empowering and supporting your community.

TYPO3 is open source, and therefore you do not need to pay it: but normally what you would pay for is having the site set up, configured and customised for you - the rest you can probably manage yourself.

• At the most basic level, if you rent server space from Gate Seven, we will supply you with a complete installation of TYPO3. This is part of the TYPO3 hosting contract.
  You then need to configure your site, and this stage can be quite challenging for beginners.
• A number of organisations such as the Web Empowered Church and YAML have made available complete TYPO3 websites, with both templates and extensions preconfigured, together with instructions for installing them. We install either of these packages as part of your web hosting agreement if you request them.
• Such systems are an extremely good starting point for a community web site, since you can have a working and quite extensively functional site almost immediately, at the expense of only a small amount of customisation.
• Virtually everything about a TYPO3 system is very configurable, and is fully documented on the internet, so if you are willing to do the work, there is no need for your site to be stereotyped for very long.
• Gate Seven are willing to do as much of the work and provide as much training as you can afford for you, so you can start out with minimal funding, create a powerful, interactive site very easily, then, when you want to customise it, either do it yourself, or get us to do it.

There are lots of other open source CMSs which you can also have free, and several of which you can install directly from your site's control panel. While you are welcome to do this, or, indeed, to install any other CMS in your server space, Gate Seven concentrate on, and support, TYPO3, which is considerably more scalable and flexible than most.