Hosting
Welcome to lesson three! As a point of clarification, a Host is a company that has servers connected to the internet where you can place your website. In other words, this company is “hosting” your website so it can been seen on the internet. Some hosting companies also have a “website builder” option available. For example, Wix.com and Weebly.com are hosting companies that also have website building software. It is important to note that not all hosting companies are created equal. If the company doesn’t charge for their services, there will be some type of catch. For example, they may run their own ads at the bottom of your website or charge you for certain features or capabilities such as being able to use your website for ecommerce. This may not be bad but you need to understand what they are.
- top Host
- Host Promo Codes (Do some exploring)
- Free Hosting
Site Builders
Drag and Drop-no coding required. These start with a free version.
- Weebly.com -A free, simple drag and drop site builder
- Wix.com— A free site builder that builds the site in Flash. (go to the site and click the “Watch the video” on the bottom of the page)
- Webstarts.com— A free, drag-and-drop site builder that seems to have more flexibility for the power users, too
- Homestead.com— hosting, site building, and templates.
- Webs.com— A free site builder that includes templates and drag-and-drop interface
- — Godaddy’s site builder
- Or one of your choice
Content Management System
More powerful and flexible, but a steeper learning curve
- WordPress—View this video to understand how it works: Using Word Press to Build a Website Yourself — A free open source content management system that is, after a few hours of training, fairly easy to use yet very powerful and flexible. Many professionals use this. Most hosts have a simple one-click install for it. The great benefit is the number of plugins and themes that are available and how useful they are. There are many tutorials available: How to use WordPress to design a website,Advanced, How to make a Banner,How to use WordPress to design a website-Image SEO Optimization, How to use WordPress to design a website-Advance SEO
- Squarespace— This is new CMS that seems to be as easy as the drag-and-drop ones above, but has the power and flexibility of WordPress or some of the WYSIWYG editors below. It seems to be easier to learn than WordPress. I don’t believe that it has plugins like WordPress. Here is a videodemo
- Joomlaand Drupalare two popular CMSs. They can be challenging to install correctly; however, most host providers will install them automatically for you. Unlike WordPress, which is made specifically for blogging but can be adapted to an e-business setting, Joomla and Drupal are more flexible and easily support e-commerce businesses (albeit, have a higher learning curve). Both Joomla and Drupal have extensive extension libraries (http://extensions.joomla.org/,http://drupal.org/project/Modules); thus, most functionality that you would desire in your website is already programmed—some are free, some are not. However, both Joomla and Drupal have a relatively high learning curve to understand their management systems depending on your past experience. See tutorials athttp://www.siteground.com/tutorials/joomla15/http://drupal.org/node/877140Most people agree that Joomla is more intuitive and user friendly, while Drupal is more flexible.
Your recommendation and justification might include the following:
- Your level of HTML sophistication
- Business’ requirements for power and flexibility
- Availability of time to learn to use the tool
- Need for professional looking website
- Need for artsy/flashy looking website