Hi, I’m Rick and welcome to Help Me with my Web Site, “How do I get a web site?”

Previously, we categorized the various types of web sites you might want. If you didn’t catch that episode, go back to watch web development 101 - Types of web sites.

Here, we want to explore the ways that you can end up with a web site:

Template sites. There are many companies out there that provide templates for you to use on your web site. You might buy a domain name from, say godaddy.com, and godaddy offers a web site template maker for a very small monthly fee. On the plus side: You can quickly and cheaply get a site online. On the downside, you can’t do much besides a brochure site, you don’t have the flexibility in look and feel that you might need, you are often limited in functionality provided.

Build your own. You could buy a program like Dreamweaver or any number of WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors to build your own site. This option gives you more flexibility, but requires much more time on your part and potentially a steep learning curve.

Blogging sites. Sites like Wordpress started as blogging platforms and are often the primary sites for many individuals and organizations. You can purchase professionally designed templates or design your own. The biggest drawback to this platform is its limitations in more customized functionality beyond blogging and associated functions.

Packaged sites. There are companies that sell web site templates for a specific market. There are turnkey solutions for chiropractors, dentists, lawyers and many other small businesses. These companies often offer a wide variety of industry specific content; you don’t have to supply anything except your name, address and phone number. The drawback is that your site will look like many other professionals in your specialty. Also, since you will have similar content to other web sites, your site won’t be rated as well as sites with more unique content. Many franchise owners don’t have a choice; they must use their corporate web site. However, some professionals, like real estate agents, break out to market themselves with a personal web site.

Content Management Systems (CMS’s). Content Management Systems are complete development platforms that allow users to virtually change any content on their site, add a wide variety of functionality and accomplish virtually anything you want. Popular CMS’s include Drupal (our favorite - another shameless plug), Joomla, Dot Net Nuke and many others. The biggest downside to implementing a CMS is that many have such a high implementation learning curve that many organizations hire specialized development firms to create the sites.

There are many development technologies that we did not even touch upon. You’ll hear about ASP, .net, Python, Ruby on Rails and many more. An experienced developer could develop your web site using these technologies. Understand that I am biased towards CMS’s, but everyone needs to effectively develop all the basic components of a CMS. So why should you fund this effort?

Next, how do you determine which web development solution is best for you?