What Are Your Choices?
When it comes to building a website quickly and easily you have a couple of options. You can either choose a cms platform such as wordpress -joomla or any one of a dozen others or you can opt to use a free website builder which allows you to buy your own domain and use your own hosting.
The third option is to use a website building software such as dreamweaver or frontpage, which the latter is a bit old now but still used. However this hub is about quick and easy and let me tell you that these software packaged website builders like dreamweaver are far from easy. They are arguably the best tool and used by most professional web designers in one capacity or another but no good for the average person wanting a quick fix.
Using A Free Website Builder
A free website builder on the other hand is a different animal and one company which springs to mind is Blinkweb. You can also download the pages you build and put them on your own hosting account. There are many others like Weebly and WebSpawner to name a couple but everything is hosted on their cloud servers so it's not quite the same. Those kinds of websites are good for promoting your site on but you should look to have full control of your own website so that you have a sellable asset later on. Big hosting companies also offer their own in house website builder and some are very good so the choice is yours but rest assured, gone are the days of it being impossible to put up a website with no skills.
Using A Content Management System
Now Wordpress is the standard blogging platform which is the most widely used content management system . It was originally created to offer a way for people to write a web log of current events. Lot's of people used them as a kind of diary of posts and many still do something like it today by adding a blog to their already built website. However, since web developers found out that the search engines loved wordpress, the emphasis then changed to using cms platforms like wordpress to build out the whole website instead.
So lots of people now use wordpress to control the whole site and use plugins to further extend the functionality and scope. In terms of which quick solution you should go for really boils down to what type of website you plan to build as different types of sites are suited to different types of applications. If you plan on having a sales letter type site where you're selling your own product you could use a website builder like Blinkweb which has a whole array of templates directly suited to this purpose. On the other hand you can buy wordpress plugins which also offer pre-built templates you can use for optin forms, sales pages, privacy pages etc.
Building A Website With E-commerce In Mind
Many people wanting an e-commerce website are best suited to using an e-commerce designed system with built in functionality such as Magento for example, which has a lot of options in this regards. You certainly wouldn't want to sit down and hand code an entire e-commerce website yourself and why would you when there are much easier options open to you. In fact there are an equal number of e-commerce site building platforms to choose from and all offer generally the same functionality such as having a shopping cart and various payments systems built into the infrastructure. It pays to take a good close look at each package though because some will be more suitable than others.
For those wanting to build an information website and monetize it with adsense, banners and other affiliated products you could use either option although the preference is wordpress. The only thing I will say is that wordpress is a little harder to get used to because there is so much functionality to it but once you spend some time using it most people find wordpress easy enough.
Finding The Right Hosting
In terms of finding the right hosting company to host your website the absolute number one feature you should look out for is support, especially when you have limited experience in handling a hosting account. I would consider myself fairly astute when it comes to using hosting but even I have problems and queries on a regular basis and without good support you are stuck. Always look for a hosting company that can offer live support through a chat window because this is usually the quickest way to get your problems solved. They should have at a bare minimum phone support because email support only just won't cut it.
I've actually tried more than 9 hosting companies in my time and one company which stands out in this regard is Hostgator who offer 24/7 live support through a chat window with more than 100 live support agents dealing with clients at any one time. They also offer unlimited options on everything from bandwidth and databases to email accounts and domains which is great for most website owners.
If you are interested in getting a hosting account with them you can use the words - 25DISCOUNTDROP - to get a 25% discount on all hosting packages. When you go to sign up for a package just type the coupon code into the box at the bottom of the sign up page and it will automatically discount all packages.
The Magical 1 Click Installs
A lot of hosting sites including Hostgator also offer what's called fantastico deluxe which is an application that lets you do 1 click installs for a number of web applications including wordpress. This makes life a whole lot easier to install programs like cms systems, forums and guestbooks to name a few in one fell swoop without having to mess around with database creations and the like.
All you have to do is choose which directory you want the program installed on and then press start. If you want it on your homepage all you have to do is leave the directory blank before you press start.
Just as a side note if you have no experience with the display panel used by all linux based hosting sites check out my other hub which goes into detail about what each function does.
Website Templates Abound
So as you can see it's relatively easy to set up your website, whether it's using a content management system like wordpress or a free website builder like Blinkweb, and with thousands of templates to choose from you should have no problems finding just what you need. As for changing the design of a template such as a header and background, you can hire a graphic design freelancer to do the job for very little these days. You only have to go to one of the many outsource websites and people from all around the world will bid for your job.
You can also get help with just about anything you can think of although different tasks will vary in price of course. For the most part though you can get a website up and running fairly cheaply and without too much trouble.
Making Sure Your Website Is Functioning Properly
Once your website is up all you then have to do is add the content, make sure your website is optimised for the keywords you are targeting and then start promoting the site. Before you do any promoting though, make sure that everything is functioning properly including all the links within your site and the ones pointing out.
You can do this by adding a plugin to your browser. I find Google Chrome to be the best web browser personally and use a plugin called "check my link" - : You may be able to find something similiar with a different browser but if not then just go ahead and download Google Chrome.
Look Before You Leap
One final point I will make before you start any type of site is to have a plan. Don't go building anything until you clearly know exactly what it is you're trying to do. Also do your research thoroughly on the keyword terms you plan to target if you are thinking of getting free traffic from the search engines. You don't want to write content which either know one is searching for or is so competitive that you won't be able to get anyone to see your site. Don't be one of the 97% of websites that fail in the first 12 months and head my advice.
Blogger Comment
Facebook Comment