A Beginners Guide to Building and Managing A Website

by Andy Boyd⁽²⁾

Managing website content

Nearly every website has content. Content can include graphics, video, text, audio files, and data. Content is essentially anything on your website that conveys meaning or information and once it is on your website, it requires that you maintain it.

Creating a website

Taking a couple of steps back, by now you have acquired a domain name and purchased a web hosting account. The next step is creating your website. A website is simply a collection of web pages and on these webs pages you will communicate to your future website visitors through the content that you leave behind on these pages.

The Basic Approach

There are a number of ways to build websites and create content. The most basic approach is creating web pages by building the pages through the use of HTML. HTML is considered a markup language which is another way to say that HTML adds formatting to your web pages. You can edit this code manually or through an HTML editor that resembles word processing software. By taking this route you have the most flexibility in design and functionality but this approach has a steeper learning curve and will likely take you a lot more time to master. There are countless resources online that can help you get started.

The Quick Start Approach

An alternative to manually building each and every page from the ground up is to utilize a content management system. Content management systems remove much of the technical skill required to build websites though it comes at a cost of less flexibility in webpage design. WordPress is a highly regarded open source (free) content management system that can be installed on all of the recommended hosting plans, usually at no extra charge. One of the main benefits of WordPress is the multitude of add on software called plug-ins and themes. A “plug-in” is an add-on application whereas a “theme” is predesigned style or user interface.

Getting Started With WordPress

WordPress originally started as a simple content management system (CMS) for setting up and managing blogsites, though with incremental improvements to the CMS platform, WordPress is now used widely by individuals to large corporations because of its flexibility and ease of use. The essentials of setting up a WordPress site generally include (1) purchasing a domain name, (2) subscribing to a hosting plan, and (3) getting WordPress installed on your hosting plan. There are a number of companies that can provide all three services, making it easy for the beginner to get started quickly.

For a complete list of WordPress hosting companies and commercial WordPress plugins to extend your WordPress site, visit BestWebPlugins.com

Author: Andy Boyd. An experienced digital Product Manager focused on the creation, execution, and sale of award-winning digital products for Search and Affiliate Marketing.

Article submitted Wednesday, March 16, 2011 & read 74 times.

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