Essential Drogheda Part 1

Click here for part 2.

Why you need a website

In the first of three articles I will start by getting you realise why you need a website, where to host it and what software to use. This page is a follow-on from the Essential Drogheda article.

Why bother getting a website at all? Well the fact is that if anyone wants to find out about your business the chances are they will turn to the Internet first. If you don't have a website then you've missed your first opportunity. Secondly, if someone has written something about your business, for example on boards.ie, then that may be the only thing they'll get to read about you. If what they wrote is negative then that's just too bad. So the way to fix this is to make sure you have some sort of online presence.

The software needed....

Today any good design agency should provide you with a content management system (CMS). In fact you should insist in it. What is a CMS you ask? Basically a CMS allows you to login to the backend of your website and add, edit or delete the content on your website yourself. Another great benefit is that provided you choose a free (also known as open-source) CMS then you will never be tied to any one design agency. There are quite a few agencies that have written their own CMS applications and while they may be good the trouble is that you may be tied to them and it can be more troube than it's worth to move your website.

So what CMS do you choose? There are 100's to consider but as I mentioned earlier I would recommend going with an open-source option. They're free and any any good web designer should be able to work with them. The top 5 CMS's I've listed below should manage most of what you need to do. In addition, they all have very active online communities which means that you can easily add extra functionality like e-commerce, discussion groups, etc, without too much effort.

• Wordpress
• Joomla
• Drupal
• CMS Made Simple
• Movable Type

Putting it online...

Now that you've chosen a CMS how do you get it installed? The first thing you need a web hosting account. This will be where you store the application so that it's available to everyone on the Internet. To keep things ultra simple I suggest that you choose a hosting company that provides a service called an 'application installer'. This is great because you simply login to your website control panel, choose the CMS you want to install and bam it's all done for you! One of the easiest of all is available at wordpress.com. They will host your site and provide you with your own domain name, e.g. myBusiness.wordpress.com. Other hosting companies that provide an application installer include:

• Blacknight - multiple CMS installers available (Irish)
• GoDaddy - Wordpress hosting (US)
• 1&1.com - multiple CMS installers available

For any other CMS's try a Google search for: (CMS name) + "hosting" for example "Wordpress hosting". There are hundreds to choose from.

Part 2 available now.

Now your hosting is ready let's get some designs in there.