Starting a Website – Need Some Guidance

 

Hello,
I am looking to start a website. I know that WordPress is a good platform for SEO purposes, but I am not very sure about the flexibility it offers in terms of look and design. I am not too well versed when it comes to building websites. There is Joomla, Php SQL, Flash Action Websites, Classified sites etc. What would be the best platform to work on if I decide to make this my main site? Any guidance would be immensely appreciated.

Answer:  WordPress has evolved into so much more than just a blogging platform.  I like it for several reasons, one of which you already mentioned – good SEO right out of the box.  And it gets even better with plugins like All In One SEO where you can control the title and description on each post and page.

Flash is cute, but visitors don’t like to wait for silly bouncing, spinning and exploding things to load.  Don’t use Flash just because you can.  Nobody cares how creative a Flash site is.  They came to your website site one thing in mind – to find what they are looking for.  Don’t make them watch a side-show to get it.

Classified sites are for, well, classified ad so why did you even mention it?  If you want a website that has classifieds, then install the classifieds and give a link to it from your main site, but don’t make the classifieds “your website” unless that’s ALL you want to do with it. 

My personal choice for building a website is WordPress.  There are tons of free plugins with special functionality that allow your site to do things that would require an expensive custom programming job on an old school website.  If you need your WP site to do something, just search for a plugin and chances are extremely high that you’ll find one.  There are also tons of free themes and you can actually make your own WordPress theme with some software called Artisteer.  I’ve been using Artisteer for over 2 years now and it just keeps getting better.

You only need PHP and MySQL if you have a database driving information on your site.  CMS and blogging software install the database.  WordPress runs off a database.

Joomla is a CMS (Content Management System).  It’s like a website on steriods.  One of the things you can do is create modules and assign them to various positions in a template.

So get yourself some cheap web hosting from iPage.  You’ll love the iPage control panel and all of the things you mentioned, WordPress, PHP, MySQL, Joomla and Classifieds are already there in the SimpleScripts 1-click software installer.  You can do the Flash with Shockwwave.

 

 

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