Website development is a broad term the is used to cover many different aspects of designing and creating a functional and successful online website. The term success in this context refers to both meeting the functional and application needs of the business owner as well as the informational and navigational needs of the end user or customer.

It is the starting point of establishing an online presence for your business. Many people make the mistake of under estimating the importance of having a well thought-out and professionally created and managed website development plan. This often leads them to believe that this is something that they can handle along with all of the other tasks and responsibilities of running an online business.

As a comparison, that would be like starting a traditional brick and mortar business and deciding to handle the task of building the business store yourself instead of having it professionally done. You could choose to go into business like that, but why would you? The same can be said for creating a successful online business, you could choose to do all of the work of creating everything yourself, but why would you want to do that?

Website development is a skill area that can best serve a business owner, his or her business needs and the needs of their customers when everything is properly throught-out, planned and then executed correctly.

This will often include many of the following key elements:

1.) Website design – identifying the different structural design needs for different types of sites i.e. ecommerce stores, a static website, website with a blog, stand alone blog, etc, etc…

2.) Content Management System (CMS) – Selecting the site platform to be used, based on the business owners vision and needs for the business.

3.) Hosting Issues – Identifying the best type of hosting for the business owners hosting needs, i.e. Shared, Virtual Private Server (VPS), Dedicated, Cloud based, etc, etc…

4.) Security – Which would include the responsibility of the physical server if locally hosted, otherwise this would include providing ongoing protection against malware or online hackers that could access and steal or tamper with your data.

5.) Database backup and recovery – This can be handled manually or automatically depending on your particular website platform.

These are just a few of the key areas that are included in website development. By properly covering each of the different areas involved you will be able to have a website that will be appealing, secure and functional for your visitors as well as easy to manage, maintain and profitable to you as the business owner. The best website development plan will be geared towards creating your website in such a way as to

1.) Maximize its ability to market your product or service effectively.

2.) Provide the best possible content management system based on your companies needs

3.) Provide consistent and reliable uptime hosting.

4.) Provide onsite security so that your customers feel that their transactions will be handled safely and securely, along with protecting their information.

5.) Regular data backup measure to ensure the ability to recovery any loss data in the event of a unforeseen disaster.

To maximize your ability to compete online effectively it is important that you allocate the time and resources needed to ensure that every area of your website development plan is properly handled.

Here is where you can find out why you need to Learn Search Engine Optimization to be able to create a successful online business.

Author: Darren Fleming
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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WordPress is an incredibly flexible CMS (Content Management System) and blogging platform, which enables you to change the ’skin’ and functionality of your site with a few clicks.

Imagine that you no longer want your red themed site and want a blue one, or if you need a three column site rather than a one column site. That’s easy to do simply by changing the theme.

There are thousands of WordPress themes available to choose from, from free to premium quality, magazine style, blog style, corporate style, the list goes on.

OK, so how do you go about changing a WordPress theme?

First of all log into your WordPress Dashboard found at yoursite.com/wp-admin. From there you need to click Appearance on the left, and then Themes.

Clicking the Install Themes tab at the top will give you some options: you can Search for a theme using the search box and the filter tick boxes at the bottom, or you can Upload a theme from your computer, or search by Featured, Newest or Recently updated themes.

Let say that you’re going to look for a blue blog theme, type Blog into the search box and tick Blue and then hit search.

You will then be faced with all the possibilities from your search, which you can browse through. By clicking the Preview link below each Image you can see roughly how the them will look. When you have decided on your perfect theme, click the install button. WordPress will then download the theme. Once done click the Activate link.

The theme will then be live on your site. You need to do a few things now. Firstly, have a look at the setting of the theme (most have these) and change what you need to, from colours, font sizes, to menus and widgets. Then have a look at your site and make sure everything is OK, as sometimes themes don’t always do what’s expected, especially free themes.

Downloaded a theme, and decide actually you don’t like it? No problem a few more clicks and you can revert back to your original theme. Simply go tot Appearances, Themes find your theme in the list of available themes and click Activate. Done.

So there you have it, changing a theme on WordPress is simple and quick, allowing you to change your sites look without coding knowledge or paying a web designer.

Dean Robinson is the creator and owner of http://www.ApinaPress.com, a site dedicated to all things WordPress and Internet Marketing. Should you want to learn more about using WordPress visit http://www.apinapress.com.

Author: Dean Z Robinson
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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If you are just getting started with WordPress you may be finding it all a bit overwhelming. Your first port of call for information will naturally be WordPress.org, but like a lot of people you may have trouble understanding the documentation. The information provided seems to be geared more towards technical people, and the average person will more than likely need to look elsewhere for guidance on how to proceed. This article will provide you with an overview of what is involved in getting started with WordPress and will start you off on the right track.

Essentially, WordPress is content management software (CMS) that you can use to create a static website, a blog or even a static website with an integral blog. It is available for free, and can either be downloaded from the WordPress site and manually installed on your own web server, or by simply using an auto-installer application provided by your web host.

Fortunately, getting started with WordPress is actually pretty simple and will not take you very long. Essentially, it involves the following steps:

• Sign up with a web host
• Register a domain name
• Install WordPress

Sign Up With A Web Host

You will need to find a web host, which you will have to pay for. However, you can get one for around $5 per month. A good place to search for a web host is TopHosts.com. Most web hosts support WordPress but it’s advisable to check before signing up. You also want to check that any prospective host provides an auto-installer such as Fantastico.

Register A Domain Name

You can get a domain name either from a domain registration company or from your web host. It is obviously a lot easier to get one from your host, although if you shop around you may save some money. However, you can get a domain name for under $10 per year so it’s probably not worth bothering.

Install WordPress

You can install WordPress using the auto-installer application provided by your host. This enables you to install WordPress with just a few clicks, and there is no software to download. If you installed it manually you would first have to download the software, configure a database, upload files and then perform the installation. The auto-installer can be accessed from the control panel provided by your web host, and regardless of the particular auto-installer you have it will be very straightforward to use.

Once you have WordPress installed you will be given a link to a login page, from where you will be able to access your WordPress administration area. This is where you will manage your site or blog, change the design and add your content.

For a complete step-by-step guide to getting started with WordPress, visit my site at http://gettingstartedwithwordpress.net. You can go directly to the Guide section of the site at http://gettingstartedwithwordpress.net/guide/

Author: Mark Andrew Watson
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Times change and ideas become commonplace, 5 years ago you could hardly begin to fathom a content management system that you would trust with the well being of your business.

Companies had to go out and hire one or more developers, which turned around custom software, and after much frustration, open source content management systems started rising out of thin air. Now some people argue that there may be way too many content management systems doing the same thing, others argue that the competition is healthy, while most just get lost in the confusion.

Most Content Management Systems cater to specific use cases, like WordPress for example, which was designed from the ground up with Blogging in mind, and later included support for regular pages, as the demand for a more versatile CMS (Content Management System) grew. It also included a plugin system, to further extend the functionality that it could provide to the user.

Joomla is quite famous for it’s generally neat and powerful ability to handle content publishing of any kind, neat administration area and a large user base. As time progressed Joomla introduced a plugin system that would allow users to make relative changes to the way their sites worked in order to fulfill specific use cases.

Other types of Content Management Systems that aim to be more flexible and begin to take the shape of more of a platform and less of a turnkey Content Management systems are projects like Ruby on Rails and Drupal. Ruby on Rails runs on the Ruby programming language and is an agile development framework with no readily available functionality out of the box, their plugins are called gems and with some know how and a few gems, you can have a website ready-made, however without any knowledge of ruby, you may be out of luck.

Drupal is the marriage between a turnkey solution and a fully expandable and powerful framework framework. With thousands of modules that provide turnkey solutions to complex solutions to abstract workhorse modules that can fulfill just about any use case you throw at them, Drupal captures the practical spirit of agile development in it’s purest form. Why develop an interface for every web application when the user can have most of the grunt work cut out of the way? thus allowing the user to focus on unique, and case specific functionality, not on a login box. You can run a blog with a shopping cart and a roll your client’s info into a CRM section of your site, all inside of a Drupal website, comfortably.

Bsidestudios is a Web Design Fort Lauderdale based firm that specializes in Web Development, Graphic Design and Drupal Web Design in the South Florida area for over 6 years.

Author: Antonio Torres
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Do you think you need a website but you are not very sure? Maybe you just have a small business and you never thought about hitting a wider market but let’s be honest – in the ever-growing world of business you need a website to exist. A website is your online business card.

6 Reasons Why You Need a Website

1. Whether your business is large or small, whether you directly work with people or not, whether you plan to sell online or not, you need a website to access a world of infinite possibilities.
2. If you want to be taken seriously, then you must have a professional website that will talk the business for you. It’s like an answering machine that always knows what to say.
3. If you build a website, you can also build a community for people who you can constantly update with the latest products or services. This way, former clients can become current ones.
4. If you find a great position to place your website on (and I’m not just talking about page ranks), you would be surprised where you could find amazing collaborations. Success leaches on success.
5. You can always request feedback from your clients/readers with a simple and honest e-mail. The quickest way to make your food delicious is by asking your clients what flavors they like.
6. A business to die for will always need a website. Your competitors already have one!

In the world of business, the bottom line is that websites are cheap to build, maintain and they generate income.

Need a Website? Start with WordPress

WordPress is an open source blogging platform that over 25 milion users choose to work with when they need a website. So, yes: it’s extremely popular. What makes it so great? This CMS (Content Management System) is powered by PHP and MySQL but you can work around it without editing PHP or HTML coding. If you do not have any experience with website building but you want to promote a business, an idea or just yourself, then WordPress is the place where you want to start.

8 Benefits for Working with WordPress

1. You choose your own domain name. For example, awesome.com sounds more confident than awesome.wordpress.com
2. You get a lot of free plugins to play with – Google XML Sitemaps, Contact Form, All in One SEO Pack, Google Analytics for WordPress etc.
3. Every site needs a theme. “Pretty colors” is the first thing the user sees when he visits your website. WordPress offers a multitude of free themes as well as more professional ones.
4. Get a free WordPress design or buy one (for a small price), and mold it to your needs.
5. FREE. The term “open source” says WordPress is free to work with. You can at least give it a shot because it will not cost you anything.
6. User-friendly. Even if you do not have the first clue about website building, you can explore the world of WordPress and get to know how stuff works.
7. SEO-appealing. Since Google has been verbalized, your website solely relies on its algorithms to be found and read. WordPress has a remarkable reputation in the eyes of search engines.
8. The community of developers is large. Whether you want a banner, a logo, a plugin that’s never been seen before or just someone to play with the coding, you can always count on WordPress developers because their numbers and expertize are constantly increasing.

If you need a website built in WordPress and are thinking of the do-it-yourself concept, then you’ll need some guidelines, tips, tutorials and general information regarding the WordPress world.

Alice Marsden would like to present you a new website that concentrates on the WordPress-based environment. It offers free easy-to-follow tutorials, plugins and general tips for all WordPress users – http://wpideas.net

Author: Alice Marsden
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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