Articles
4 Different Ways to Build a Website
Posted on September 2, 2014
Building a website for your organization or business is crucial to your future success. As such, it’s vital that you explore every avenue when building your site. This, of course, starts off with deciding how to build your website. There are many different ways you can go about creating a website for your business and what’s good for the goose is not good for the gander.
For some businesses, hiring a website designer and builder is just going to make more sense because the return on investment (ROI) is going to negate the costs by a long shot. For others, building their own website is going to be more cost-effective and in the end, will be the only way that a foray into the online world of marketing and sales will be profitable.
4 Ways that You Can Build Your Website
In the end, the decision is yours to make. You will take in factors such as cost, scope, timeline, size of your business, goals and feasibility. To help you get a feel for the different ways that you can build your website, here are five choices to consider:
1. WordPress or Similar CMS. A CMS is a content management system and regardless of which type you choose (WordPress is widely recognized as the best, but there are many other out there), it will provide you with a simple way to construct your website without having to know a lot about websites or website building. Essentially, these are generally standard templates where the coding on the back end is already done. While this cuts down on how much overall control you have over your site (that’s what web designers do), it’s more than enough control for the average small to mid-sized business. These templates are essentially “fill in the blanks” so all you have to do is manage the content within the system. In other words, fill in the blanks with the content and your website is all ready to launch.
2. Adobe Dreamweaver. If you have a fair grasp of HTML and CSS (if you don’t know what these are, this probably isn’t the choice for you), Adobe Dreamweaver provides you an easy way to make complex websites. This simply means that you have more creative control over the design and construction of your site without having to own expensive web design and coding programs that professionals use.
Adobe Dreamweaver is what’s known as a WYSIWYG web editor. This stands for “what you see is what you get” since it’s a visually based design system that allows you an easier way to create your website. What you see and do is what your viewers will see. Dreamweaver converts your designs into standards compliant code, which simply means it will work and work effectively.
3. Hiring a Web Designer. By far the most costly option, but also the easiest, this simply means you outsource the job to a professional web designer. Of course, you will have to pay and you will have to do your homework to find a web designer that you can work with, but in the end, you can customize your website as little or as much as you desire—it just depends on how much you want to pay. Keep in mind that you are only paying for the design here. You will also have to pay to have the website hosted, to have content created (or do it yourself) and manage the website going forward. The more you outsource these tasks, the more “hands off” you become. You also wind up paying more. Of course, you do get professional results and for people who want nothing to do with a website, throwing money at the issue can be a satisfying solution.
4. Free Website Builder. Finally, free website builders allow you a simple way to design, build, launch and manage your website for free. These builders are generally “drag and drop” control panels which means you have a number of options on the left which you simply pick from and then drag them over onto your site with your mouse and drop them where you want them to go. Then, you simply fill in the content and launch your site. For example, if you choose a text box from the left and then “drag and drop” it in the middle of the page, you simply then write the text in the box (the box that you dropped is actually the code for the site).
Read more at http://www.business2community.com/tech-gadgets/4-different-ways-build-website-0994696#!bOllzb