When looking to build a cheap website, there are many resources available. In fact, many online companies offer free installations of platforms that you can easily modify to your specifications. Here are 5 of the cheapest ways to get your website up and running.
- WordPress: A full featured blogging platform with a comprehensive admin panel and literally thousands of free and paid templates to choose from. Although originally intended for blogs, many templates come in magazine style layouts that can be modified to your liking. If you have knowledge of CSS you can turn the template into just about any design you want. Virtually any available website features can be embedded into a WordPress template, from graphics to flash animation. Do a search for “Wordpress templates” and see how many options you have. You can take the software for a test run by getting a free account at WordPress.com.
- Joomla: Known as a CMS (Content Management System) is like WordPress, a free open-source system. The difference with Joomla is that while WordPress is geared towards blogs, Joomla has templates that cater to business as well as blogs. One look at a Joomla template and the difference is apparent.
- Drupal: This platform is a CMS like Joomla, although with any platform, the features will vary. Many web hosts will offer to install Drupal for you to get started. No HTML knowledge is need to use Drupal, so for the novice webmaster, Drupal could be the ticket.
- Outsourcing: For the administratively challenged, outsourcing you website set up may be the best alternative. There are many website developers that use the above platforms, and they are very good at what they do. The experienced user can have a comprehensive website up and running in a matter of hours. Changes can be made within minutes on sites already running. For the above platforms “you get what you pay for” does not apply. They have already proven their worth. That may not be the case when outsourcing your website set up. If you decide to outsource the set up, make sure you take a look at their previous work and then decide that is who you want.
- Start from scratch: This is probably the most time consuming (and least recommended) option. If you have extensive knowledge of HTML and CSS you can build a site from scratch, but with so many other options available, why would you?
There are other options out there, but the platforms mentioned above are considered the cream of the crop. You should be able to build any kind of site you want using one of these options.