Creating a website for small business is not as hard as you would think. Before you get started, there are a few important considerations 1) what content should I make available? 2) how should I host it? 3) what platform / language should I use? While I won't get into what content should or should not be included on your site (it's really depends upon your business needs), let me talk about some of things we find work well for small businesses in the hosting and the platform area.

As far as deciding to host or to outsource the hosting, it comes down to your in-house expertise and the amount of sites you'll be hosting. If you have IT personnel skilled in either IIS (Windows) or Apache (Unix), you may do okay with hosting your own site. It also makes sense when there are several sites being hosted and you can utilize one server for those several sites. On the other hand, if you don't have that expertise in-house or you'll only be hosting one small site, it makes much more sense to outsource the hosting. A few trusted hosting vendors include GoDaddy and Network Solutions - their hosting plans start for as little as $4.99/mo (and up depending upon your specific needs.

In as far as creating content, there are serveral content management solutions available - Drupal, Joomla and Word Press are some examples. A content management solution makes it easier to update your site without having to remember complex coding or site navigation. We have used Joomla for several website projects are are extremely pleased.

Joomla is extremely easy to use and allows users to place content in articles or in modules. The articles usually appear in the main body of the template and the modules can strategically be placed in any of the numerous "module positions" available in the template. There are several types of modules that ship with Joomla including custom html, rss readers, search, etc., but what makes Joomla so powerful is the large library of extensions (many free) that you can install on top of the CMS. Extensions can be found to do just about anything - calendars, news tickers, scrollers, photo albums, guestbooks, and so on. With the help of these add-ons (or extensions), almost any size business can make Joomla fit their needs.

Any questions, feel free to contact us.

Written by: Brian Petr