Building Your Site
You generally build websites in one of two ways: As from-scratch custom sites or as template-based do-it-yourself sites. If you’re planning to build a custom site, unless you’re an experienced designer, technically adept, and really know what you’re doing, hire a pro. Chapter 9 helps guide your search and selection process. Hiring a pro will cost you time and funds — that’s the downside. The upside is that you’ll end up with a site that conveys your unique brand image, with a viewing and navigation system precisely tailored to your unique business offering, all built on a platform that can grow with your business.
If you’re planning to build your site yourself, the resources available to you just keep getting better. To start, check out the following free site design and layout services online:
WordPress is a blog platform increasingly used as a website builder. You may need help from a freelance web expert, but for close to nothing (except time), you can get a site with good, basic functionality up and running. Go to http://codex.wordpress.org
. Also check out WordPress For Dummies by Lisa Sabin-Wilson (Wiley).
Weebly (www.weebly.com
) lets you use drag-and-drop functions to create a site with no cash outlay that you can have up and running within days. Figure ...
Get Small Business Marketing Kit For Dummies, 3rd Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
