So you want to launch a website? Basic tips for the barely web-literate.

Posted by UPmarketArt under Resources
From http://www.ucreative.com 3211 days ago
Made Hot by: sophia2 on July 13, 2015 6:40 am

Anyone can create a website. You can literally have a page up in ten minutes.

But it takes quite a bit more finesse and planning to lay the foundations for success.

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Comments

Written by HeatherStone
3209 days ago

So interesting points here, Art, and here's the big question. I notice one of your points was to choose a content management system. I realize this has been pretty much the pattern in recent years and I'm sure we may get a debate started with others in the community, but I notice you didn't say, hire a Web designer. Is having a custom Website designed for your business not a recommended option anymore these days? Is there anyone who should be doing this, or is customizing an existing content management system always the best option?

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Written by UPmarketArt
3208 days ago

Hi Heather!

Great questions! We decided to gear the piece towards people who'd like to try creating a site themselves.

The scope of web design is huge and we had to spend a bit of time figuring out what would likely work for newbies who were actually interested in how creating one works.

For most intents and purposes we felt that a custom website isn't practical for most small businesses, considering that these days, platforms such as WordPress offer most of the functionality the vast majority of us will ever need.

The more popular off-the-shelf options also usually have an active community of users, making it far simpler to find solutions to nearly any issue and administrators able to get a handle of the site should it be turned over.

A custom solution can work better, but they also tend to be easier to mess up and harder to fix. Most of the effort in building a site, in my opinion anyway, should be spent creating useful, shareable content -- not managing it. If the custom solution makes it possible, I'm all for it!

We also felt that it might go without saying that most of us would be far better off hiring a good web designer. But in any case it's up to us to give the designer direction and context, and it's difficult to do this if we don't know what's happening under the hood.

Thanks for reading! :D

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