Not all that long ago it took a professional web designer and development team to design, program, and implement a website. Prices were expensive and not guaranteed. They needed to be experts in graphics and manipulation, FTP software, C Panels, and search engine technology, even though it was in its infancy. Fast forward to the 21st century, and we find there is more than one easy way to make a website for free.
All the programming that needed high level professionals less than twenty years ago can be accomplished through means totally unheard of way back when. Programs and code have been written to do what the program and the code only touched on in the early 1990s.
The advent of template based websites took over the industry. Small companies, large companies, sole proprietors, and stay at home moms offering babysitting services learned how to build their own websites that included everything from pictures, graphics, animation, newsletter generation, autoresponders, RSS feeds, and fully integrated user friendly shopping cards. For free.
Companies like Yahoo and Google and Microsoft offer fabulous options to build fully functional websites for free or for pennies. Of course, you do need to buy a domain name if you want a real “dot com” address, otherwise, your URL will include the name of the sponsor of your site.
The difference would be similar to this: www.yahoo.freesites.yourcompanyname.com vs. Having your own domain name, which would be www.yourcompanyname.com. Either is acceptable, but it all depends on what you’re selling. There’s a certain level of professionalism that is expected, and your domain name is very important.
Another option that many are taking advantage of in order to stop paying what have become some very expensive monthly upkeep fees, is to use a free blogging site. Certain sites are completely customizable and you still have the opportunity to get your own URL/domain name. In other words, the fact that you are using a blog for your website is totally transparent to your customers.
If you don’t want to use a blog, then you can use a free template provided by one of the many companies out there who do this, but then you’ll need to find a reliable and cheap hosting company.
Free doesn’t necessarily mean “cheap” or unattractive. There are some superb websites out there that were done using free services they found online. Not just tiny companies, but companies that do business nationally or even internationally. Business owners have finally realized that there is no need to spend hundreds of dollars a month to have someone on call to update their site on a regular basis. They do it themselves, for free, using user friendly template services. Why pay for something when you get it for free?
Dhruv Patel is a customer of DreamHost. He has created site to help new DreamHost customers and to promote DreamHost by giving DreamHost coupon. You can also find detailed DreamHost review there.
