i think you might be trying to solve the author's imaginary problems.
all the author needs is a wordpress site with a couple plugins and a few weeks of back and forth on the design work. if you can't make a good profit on that with a $15k invoice, you're doing something very wrong.
The problem is that their brief is too vague and the real issue is communication.
At no point is it clear that they’ve discussed off the shelf solutions, or infrastructure (storage, server hiding, CDN etc).
If they had, then they either messed up because 15k over two months is too high or too low. It’s squarely in the: “nobody has actually defined the project territory” for me.
Yes, a Wordpress solution would work, but then why even budget 2 months for it, unless bespoke design is involved. Again that becomes a: this is too low or too high to be realistic
>At no point is it clear that they’ve discussed off the shelf solutions, or infrastructure (storage, server hiding, CDN etc).
why should they? the requirements are listed in the article. the job is to meet the requirements. "where should we store the files" is a job the client hires you to answer, not something requiring communication.
The requirements are insufficient if you’re going to be so particular as to stick exactly to them. You can’t guarantee the uptime’s requested without talking about infrastructure.
all the author needs is a wordpress site with a couple plugins and a few weeks of back and forth on the design work. if you can't make a good profit on that with a $15k invoice, you're doing something very wrong.