So you’ve decided you do need a website, now you need to decide what type. And the best way to ascertain that is by knowing how you’re going to use the site from a business perspective.

Of course if you’re just setting up a fun blog, then you might not need to put as much thought into it, although in my experience, the more planned one is the better all things turn out.

The type of content you’re planning on putting on your site will also have enormous bearing on the platform you choose (platform meaning the software the site is built on such as wordpress, mambo, joomla, ning, siteflex etc). Or whether you decide to have a custom CMS (content management system) built by a programmer or whether you create a site within another hosting platform such as blogspot, wordpress.org etc.

I segregate the platforms into two main categories. Those you pay for and those you don’t. And then those you don’t pay for into two more categories, those you self host and those that are hosted within a structure that you create your little piece of.

The free platforms are commonly termed Open Source, which means they are free to use and you basically manipulate them yourself. Some of them require no prior web knowledge such as html, and some do. And some give the option of both.

I judge which platform to use based on the nature of the site.

If it’s a static brochure style site, you can use anything really, it all depends on how much money you’ve budgeted for your site. Open source is basically free except for your hosting fees and the time it will take you to set it up. If you don’t know how to set it up then whatever it costs for you to pay someone else to do it.

If you do it within another framework such as wordpress.org or blogspot.com, then it’s pretty self explanatory and not too difficult. This will just take you some time to figure it all out.

If you decide on an open source platform but self host, then a little more effort is involved and some knowledge of working with host’s interfaces and FTP programs will be required. Again, if you know what you’re doing, the only cost here will be the hosting and that can be under $100 a year of you host in the US, slightly more in Australia, although they are getting more competitive, if you do all the work yourself. If you have to pay someone else to do I then the cost will be whatever they charge, and they’ll vary.

But if you have a website that requires more complicated functionality and/or a reasonable amount of member only content, you might want to think more seriously about what you build the site it.

While open source is less expensive, it also can have security issues and is vulnerable to hacking. I experienced this myself with my very first database driven site built in Mambo. It got hacked and the database was almost non recoverable. I ended up spending several months rebuilding the content.

They have certainly improved since then but I still would not build a website that required member subscription or advanced programming and functionality in an open source platform. I’d either use a custom built flexible platform such as Siteflex or Pegboard or another managed CMS, i.e. one I had to pay for. If you pay for it, it means it’s fully supported and usually comes with some installation as part of your purchase price. Then it’s just a matter of learning how to manage the content through the admin. A paid platform usually also comes with online tutorials to help you with this.

If your content is free and you keep backups of it, then an open source CMS such as Joomla, Mambo or Wordpress will work fine.

If you’re interested in establishing a website and need some guidance and or help with setting it up, please email me via the Contact Page.