Friday, January 2, 2009

Building your Website Starts from the Inside Out

By Theodore Metagastar

You have that great idea that you are ready to put onto the web. How do you go about building your presence? There are many options available, most of which we dont even think about or know exist when we visit the websites we enjoy so much.

There are many ways to create webpages. For example, if you have Microsoft Word, especially the newer versions, you can create and even publish your web pages directly from Word to your hosting site. This is easy in appearance, but you will be lacking in some of the more common features available today.

One option is buying a website creation software package. These programs do have a learning curve, but have the capacity to manage and publish your website, and offer many great features.

There is another direction you can take, and that is choosing a content management system. These systems are integrated web site design and pubishing programs that give your website a foundation. Themes and add on features are always available for these systems.

A couple of the popular Content Management Systems, or CMS or short, are Joomla and Wordpress. Both of these CMSs are build with Open Source, meaning that the code is provided to help others to build supporting components. This shared environment makes open source programs an amazing creative collective that has resulted in a wide array of features. Some of these features are fee based, while many are given freely or by donation.

Joomla is an content management system with many available features. A good start with Joomla is to visit their website. You can see what add on features are available, down load the base software as well as templates and plugins, and read the forums.

Wordpress is another popular choice for a content management system. There are three options with Wordpress. The first is Wordpress hosted at the Wordpress site. This option limits the templates and features of your website, but is free hosting. The next level is to install Wordpress at your own hosting, which gives you more control over the inner workings of your site.

If you want to have a community type setting you can always consider Wordpress MU. This software is a variation of the typical wordpress installation, but lets you run multiple sites with only one install. You can control the features available for each subdomain within the MU community.

It takes time and energy to build a website, and giving a little thought to the underlying system can save you hours of hard work. Once you delve into your chosen content management system you will find many powerful options available for producing a great website. - 16759

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