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DIY Websites: Three Options To Consider When Building A Simple Website
Building a website for your company can often be an experience filled with confusion and frustration. WordPress is a favorite of many industry experts and business owners. However, just like Microsoft and the PC industry, the possibilities are nearly infinite when it comes to setting up your website. From picking a host, finding a design and adding features, building a WordPress based site for your company can be daunting at times. At the other end of the spectrum there is Tumblr. For those unfamiliar with the site, Tumblr is a blogging platform similar to WordPress, however it tends to be skewed towards creative types because it is solely a blogging platform, which cannot be expanded. Despite this key limitation, one of the biggest advantages of Tumblr is that it works “out of the box” because they exercise extensive control over their product.
Fortunately, when it comes to web development there is a middle ground which provides the power of WordPress with the simplicity of Tumblr. This solution is SquareSpace, a turnkey website offering that provides users with the ability to construct a professional looking site in a matter of three simple steps. First, users are provided with a wide selection of quality templates and designs which are pre-built with content layouts, which means users simply pick a theme and add their content. All of SquareSpaces’ designs also include a mobile friendly theme out of the box, eliminating the need for you to hire a developer to code a mobile theme after you are up and running.
Despite having pre-made templates ready to go in an instant, SquareSpace still allows users to create blogs, galleries, and even normal web pages. Advanced users have the capability to build their own templates using industry standards (HTML/CSS) rather than a proprietary format which locks users into the system – something which is very common with many turnkey web products. A thorough developer section on the site also helps web developers create themes for SquareSpace, just as they would for WordPress and other platforms.
Just like products offered by Apple, SquareSpace focuses only on a limited range of offerings, but is better able to support their users because of this decision. Pricing for SquareSpace starts at $8/month and includes 20 pages/galleries/blogs, 500GB Bandwidth, 2GB storage, a custom domain, and 24/7 support. The next plan is $16/month, which includes unlimited: pages/galleries/blogs, bandwidth, storage, contributors, and other helpful features.
Is WordPress still relevant with offerings like SquareSpace? The short answer is yes. The reasons, however, are endless. Ultimately the biggest limitation of SquareSpace is that it is somewhat sand-boxed while WordPress gives you full control over your website. While the sand-boxed approach is helpful for a blog or basic website that you just want to post and forget, if you’re planning to build an online store or a highly complex website, you will likely need WordPress or an alternate solution.
The post DIY Websites: Three Options To Consider When Building A Simple Website appeared first on Small Business Technology.
Ramon Ray, Editor & Technology Evangelist, Smallbiztechnology.com
http://www.twitter.com/ramonray | http://www.facebook.com/smallbiztechnology
[email protected]
Small Business Technology Tour (Fall 2011)
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2013-01-15 11:04:07
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