It’s no secret. Just about everybody either needs a website, or would love to have one anyway. A big roadblock to this is website design. Not everybody knows how to program HTML and Javascript and Java or Perl or PHP or .ASP or…. the list goes on. For most of us it’s mind boggling just to consider. It would be like thinking of travelling to Japan only to be told that you just have to be fluent in Japanese or pay for a full time escort for your travels, otherwise you are forbidden to go. If that were  the case, Japan’s tourism would certainly plummet. Thankfully for both the Japanese and those who wish to visit their beautiful country that is absolutely not the case, nor is it the case with having your own website. At least, not anymore.

Gone (mostly) are the days of websites programmed page by page. Even programming websites isn’t really all that common anymore. You can create and manage your own website thanks to a trend that is seeing software programmers building software to help the layman do just that.. The cool stuff is, some of it is free! Whether you are planning to start a blog, build an online web retail store, or have a basic (or complex) company website, there’s probably free software out there that will do what you need. If there is not, you should look into the paid software offerings that may be easily customised to your need. Otherwise if you simply don’t have the energy to deal with it you could always hire a website designer. But you definitely do not NEED to.

Let’s start with the block. WordPress is an Open Source and free CMS that is available to download. The program is quite easy to use and can be personalised to suit your tastes and your business. Although that is the case, you are free to get started with it right “out of the box” because although you can customise it you don’t have to. Other blog software packages like Moveable Type mean if WordPress doesn’t suit your needs there are plenty of other options.

If you want to start your own online store you can do that too. OS Commerce isn’t as easy to use as WordPress but it IS free and can give you a fully functional web store a lot easier than you probably thought was possible. Non-free software such as LiteCommerce is still pretty cheap, and even professional grade software like X-Cart can be had for less than you would pay a web designer for a small, six page site.

For other needs there is basic content management software like Joomla, which is another free option. You will find a lot of other free offering in this area plus off course the paid ones. These programs might seem a little more confusing in the sense there are more menus and more things to learn, but that’s just because they offer so many opportunities to manage your content in customizable ways. For the user, a sophisticated program like Joomla is much easier to use than you would think by looking at the websites that use it.

Provided for your benefit by Colin Fenton. Colin Fenton works with Simply Easy Sites to help trade workers and other small business owners to market their businesses online.