Building a Site
After acquiring a domain name and web host for your web site, the next step is to create a site and upload it to your server. This is one of the most challenging tasks for most Internet Entrepreneurs especially if they do not have any knowledge or experience in building a site. This article covers different ways to go about creating your site.
Creating From Scratch
Most Internet Entrepreneurs start off by creating a web site from scratch. The following are some of the programming languages that you need to pick up for site creation:
You can learn each of the above language for free by clicking the above links.Of all the languages above, you have to know HTML and CSS in order to create any type of web sites. HTML allow you to write content to be parsed by browser so as to display to your visitors. CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) allows you to control how the HTML elements will look like in the browsers. It is possible to create a site purely with HTML but it is tedious if you want to change the look of the HTML elements across the whole site in future without CSS.
JavaScript is a nice knowledge to add on if you are looking for some nice effects to add to your site. With JavaScript, you can improve the interactivity with your visitors such as having a simply quiz to test our your visitors on the spot.
To create an even more powerful and capable site, you would need to leverage the power of server-side scripting language such as PHP or ASP. Of the two, PHP is the most common utilised language currently. With PHP, you are able to create any application from discussion boards to online games.
If you are looking to store massive data from your users' input, then learning and picking up a SQL is essential. SQL allows you to store and retrieve data from databases easily. We would recommend you to learn MySQL and it is the most popular SQL platform that most people choose when creating online business.
What Software To Use?
After deciding on the language to use, you need to have tools to script the site. A common tool used by most Internet Entrepreneurs is Adobe Dreamweaver. This tool allows you to create a site in a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) environment. This simply means that you can drag and drop components in the editor without writing any codes. However, this tool costs a few hundreds dollars to purchase.
Another alternative we recommend is to use the open source editor such as PageBreeze. It is another WYSIWYG editor but is open source.
We would like to highlight that using WYSIWYG tools to create web sites may not be the best choice in long term. The reason is because most WYSIWYG editor creates redundant codes when you create the site visually. Only by coding the site manually will ensure you have a much compact and clean site at the end of the day. One amazing and reliable open source editor that we use for coding web sites is PSPAD.
A Better Choice - CMS
If you have followed this article till now, you would agree that creating a site from scratch is no easy task. We strongly believe that Internet Entrepreneurs should spend most of their time managing their ideas and business opportunities rather than stressing over coding errors. We are fortunate that people have came up with solutions for us to install and create a site in a much more easier manner - using Content Management System (CMS).
CMS allows you to work on the content of your site without knowing any coding knowledge after you have installed it on your server. There are many CMS for different types of sites currently and the most popular ones (and free) are as follows:
- Joomla (For creating content rich sites)
- WordPress (For creating blogs, can be tuned to present like a normal site)
- PHPBB (For creating forums, discussion boards)
- Zen Cart (For creating e-commerce store)
- Moodle (For creating online learning portal)
You can find and test our more open source CMS over at OpenSourceCMS.
You should note that even if you are using CMS for your site, you still need to put in time to learn how to use the CMS effectively. Most CMS is not so straight forward to pick up and books have been written purely to teach users how to use them. Hence, be prepared to invest some time to pick up the system.
Outsourcing Development of Your Site
You may want to have experienced Developers to code up a site for you in any case. This is a more viable option if you have very limited time resources to pick up and create a site yourself. The downside of this option is that you will not be able to learn the language and you will feel helpless when your site encounter errors or you need to improve on certain features of the site.
End Note
There is no single solution to propose for all Internet Entreprenuers. We would advise you to look at your current resources and decide if you can invest your time to learn and pick up the languages or would rather focus on learning how to use a CMS. Alternatively, you can look into your network and see if you can collaborate with anyone and create a win-win situation where you provide the idea and manage the business aspect while your partner focus on the site's development so that you can minimise overheads in future site enhancement.
This article is written by KC TAN. You may reprint this article only with a live link back to WebSprout Consulting.
