Out of the three basic steps of creating a website we have already talked about how to choose a domain and how to choose web hosting. Next step is to make the actual website that will be served to your vIsitors. This is a vast topic so in this post I will only talk about the common type of websites. I will explain about each one in detail later in separate posts.
Static website or dyanamic website?
Static website shows basic html pages to visitors and its one way communication only. Visitors can not send message or leave comments. If you want your visitors to contact you you will need to provide contacts details like email address or phone number on website. However, there are many third party services available now. By using them you can add contact box or comment options to static websites.
Dynamic websites generated pages dynamically from some data source (most commonly a database) and serve them to visitors. These websites can also record comments or messages from visitors without using any third party services. Its 2 way communication. These websites requires some type of programming or scripting language. Most commonly used are php, ASP.NET, python, ruby. There are numerous other you can use.
If you have planned your website beforehand you must be knowing about the type of website you want.
Common type of websites:
Blogs
Personal websites
Content websites
Company websites
Ecommerce website
Social networks
Forums
Let's talk about them one by one.
1. Blogs:
Blogs are like online journals. Entries arrange in reverse chronological order i.e. newest entry first.
Blogs can be further divided into personal blogs and business blogs.
Personal blogs are created by any person to share their personal thought or anything they want to share.
Business blogs are maintained by businesses to share things about their business like latest news, product introductions, how to use their products etc.
Creating a blog:
You can either install some blogging software on your hosting or choose from many services where you can create your blog either for free or for some fee. Most popular blogging platforms are WordPress, blogger(blogspot) and tumblr.
WordPress come in two flavours wordpress.com where you can create a blog for free and WordPress.com will host it for free with some restrictions. Wordpress.org is site from where you can download wordpress software and host it on your own hosting. Self hosted are preferred option.
Blogger.com is most popular hosted blogging platform owned by Google. It is completely free. If you have a google account you can login to blogger and start your blog in minutes.
Tumblr is relatively new service owned by yahoo. It is also hosted like blogger and is completely free. It is also a social network.
2. Personal websites:
These websites are built to introduce or update information about certain individuals. For example politicians make websites telling about their past life and work done by them.
Creating a personal website:
Personal websites can be created easily by editing html templates and adding required content into it but its more convenient to use wordpress to create website using a appropriate wordpress theme.
If you want to to it with template method you can find numerous templates (both free and paid) by searching on google.
If you considering wordpress to make your website you can get many wordpress themes (free and paid) too. There are many benefits of going this route:
- You (mostly) don't have to mess with the html while creating the website.
- You can create more pages very easily. That will save a lot of time.
- You can use any of the numerous wordpress plugins to add additional functionalities to your site with minimum of work.
- managing website is comparatively very easy.
3. Content websites:
As the name suggest content websites serve various kind of content to the users. Content may be images, news articles, music files, videos, maps or any other kind of content. Example youtube is video site, flickr is image hosting site, sound cloud is music/sound hosting site, BBC.com is news site.
Creating a content website:
Different type of content require different type of website to display properly. A news website can be made just like a blog. You can start a news website with wordpress and a theme displaying news in better way. There are themes available for wordpress to make video and image hosting sites.
4. Company websites:
These are like personal websites but they are built to provide information about company and their products and services. Companies can also provide support and additional services to their customers on their website. Also they get valuable feedback from their customers.
Creating company website:
Creating a company website is little different. If you want a simple website you can build it just like a personal website i.e. by finding a appropriate html template and editing it or using wordpress with appropriate theme.
If your requirement is little more than that, for example if you want to add customer support system, you may have to get it custom coded. It all depend on what you want with your website.
5. eCommerce websites:
These are website where seller enlist their products with price and other information related to the product and visitors can buy them on the website. Example amazon and eBay.
Creating a eCommence website:
Creating a eCommerce website requires an online cart software (free and paid both are available) or you can use any of the specialised online cart solutions like shopify.
Weebly also offer online cart if you want to sell something.
Some people also use paypal button on website pages to sell their products and services.
You may also need to signup with a payment processor service to accept payments from the buyers.
6. Social networks:
These websites let people communicate with each other online. Example are Facebook and twitter.
Creating a Social network:
Creating a social network used to be a difficult task but now you can get special script and services using any of those you can create you own social network easily. I have personally used boonex dolphin and social engine softwares and ning's hosted service to create social networks.
7. Forums:
These are like online discussion groups. Most of online forums are built around specific topics and they promote user interactions with each other. Example healthforum.com
Creating a Forum:
Just like blog creation you can create a forum by downloading forum software and installing it on your web hosting or you can register with any forum hosting service.
Both free and paid options are available in both categories.
Most popular free forum softwares are phpBB, SMF and vanilla forums.
Most popular paid softwares are vBulletin, XenForo and IP.Board.
IP. Board and vanilla forums also provide hosted services.
I will discuss creating website in details in separate blog posts. You can subscribe to this blog to get notified when new post are live.
