In today’s technology dependent world, a good website can function as a primary store front. Why not?
Compared to a physical location for business, it costs less. Often, a website is the most effective approach to finding new customers and interacting with them.
However, building any website takes time: a resource small business owners – like you – simply do not have much of. Your time must be used wisely; efficiently.
So, if you’ve decided to personally develop your business’s online presence and have no technical experience, you’ll most likely invest too much of your precious time to learn what’s out there. This means trial and error before finding the right “fit”. Even then, you might not choose the best tools for your needs and waste time with software that’s too limited or too complex.
To accelerate the learning curve, we’ve compiled resources for a few of the popular web tools currently available. We encourage all first-time website builders (or people ready to commission a website) to explore the merits and benefits of each choice of software.
Every tool set in the DIY Web Project has shown to be well supported, commonly used and has received high recommendations from enough sources to warrant investigation.
Below you will find links to websites which discuss the software they were created with. Explore these sites, and you’ll get a sense of their capabilities so you can decide which tool set is right for you.
Basic Website Building Tools
Google Sites – Perhaps the easiest web tools available. Certainly not the most robust but great for creating fast, free and easy sites.
Webnode – An easy to use, free web-based tool set that’s a step up from Google Sites: more design options and a slightly steeper learning curve.
Content Management Systems
Joomla! – site under construction
Drupal – site under construction
Blog Management System
WordPress – A very popular tool set for blogging that can also be used to create a full webpages.
Google Blogger – A free blog publishing tool from Google for easily sharing your thoughts with the world. Blogger makes it simple to post text, photos and video onto your personal or team blog.
