Porting of Website to new CMS

We are looking to port our current website to a new CMS with greater functionality, and free from constraints imposed by the current proprietary CMS.

Our current CMS automates various functions, such as resizing uploaded images,and automatically generating menu items etc, for new product pages, but such automation will not be necessary in a new CMS as new pages are added fairly infrequently.

Our current website has around 200 odd pages of content, though to save costs, we are happy to copy over the majority of the content ourselves, and really only need the CMS and structure correctly setting up, and any templates creating - ideally using code that exists on our current site.

It is very important that the website retain its current look, feel and structure so the change is invisible to outside users.

A decent proportion of our new business is also through web search via the website, so It is also crucial that web rankings for search terms are not negatively affected by any changes made in this move. (Positive effects are of course most welcome!! :) ). As part of the 'porting', any 301 redirects that might be required, need to be properly planned and completed, and should be quoted for as part of this project.

The new CMS will need to be a publicly available (i.e. off-the-shelf) package (i.e. not proprietary or tied to any one web design company), ideally should have the facility to be easily updated by us, as new versions and functionality becomes available, without the need for further web programming.

In terms of functionality the new CMS will need to include the ability to add new product pages, manage and control all content throughout the site, including images and text, plus allow free editing of SEO related content (i.e. meta-tags, alt-text, etc) plus allow for simple 301 redirects to be put in place when/where required.

When providing the new quote, please highlight any issues that you feel could be problematic,please also state the CMS package you would look to use. If you would like to look at our current site before quoting, please contact me (as I believe I am not allowed to show our web address in this advert). Please do not ask me for a budget, I would rather people quote on what the feel it will actually cost, however any other questions, please fire away.

In terms of time scale I would like this to be completed as soon as possible, however as our website is of such critical importance to our business, it will be crucial that this work is properly planned and performed and in no way rushed.

The person therefore that will win this work, will be the one that can properly demonstrate to me that they have established a proper and calculated plan of attack for this project, rather than simply the cheapest quote.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Many thanks,

Gareth