Hi, I’m Rick and welcome to Help Me with my Web Site, Types of Web Sites.

Up to now, we have covered some introductory material and internet jargon. If you might need some help in those areas, you might want to watch those videos first.

This is Web Development 101. In the “Web development” series, we will explore the issues surrounding web site development.

There are a variety of web sites out there, for example:

Brochure sites. These sites are primarily made to display information to the visitor. It could be a lawyer advertising his practice. It could be a web designer displaying the sites he or she has developed. (Shameless plug.) In many cases, the only participation opportunity that the visitor has is to fill out a contact us form. I don’t mean to sound condescending to these types of sites because there is a place for them, but search engines tend to like more dynamic, recent content. Static, unchanging pages are not as interesting to search engines as pages that are kept more up to date. Brochure sites don’t need to be unchanging, but they often are.

E-commerce sites. You want to buy stuff. You go to these sites. Amazon, WalMart.com, or you do a Google search for “shoes” or somesuch. Also in this category are sites like ebay, that conducts transactions between buyers and sellers. Since they actually exchange money for goods, e-commerce sites must have a higher level of security than most brochure sites. You don’t want someone grabbing your credit card to buy, buy, BUY!

Community sites. It’s so easy to find communities that share common interests on the web. You can find sites on knitting, softball, astronomy or whatever you want. You can share information and tips, help others, arrange meetings, and much more. To me, sites like facebook are kind of a community site and kind of a portal. Facebook started to connect college students together who went to a particular college in a specific year. However, I could also argue that, since it now so large, it is now also a portal site.

Portals and intranets. Portal sites display a gateway into a subset of the internet. Your company could have a private intranet that points to information of specific interest to employees. The front page of Yahoo or your customized version of Yahoo or Google is a portal, customizable by you. Back to Facebook, I could consider Facebook a portal as its front page is a view developed from the comments of my friends.

Web applications. Web applications are effectively online programs that accomplish something for you. You log in to your banking site and transfer money from your savings to your checking account. (A little short this month, are we?) Web applications range from dating sites to gambling sites. From adventure games to stock trading. (Are those two the same thing?)

Search engines. If you can’t find what you want on the internet, it might as well not be there. A search engine is often your first stop to finding what you want. Google has been the most popular search engine because it has consistently been able to tune its search results to match our expectations.

Chances are that you’re not interested in building a search engine. However, you might want to promote your business, develop a online community, provide a corporate intranet, or provide a web app. Continue on with us to explore the options you have in developing a web site.