Website Hosting Solutions
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David
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February 20th, 2012
When it comes to web hosting solutions there are a few options to choose from. The most common type is just a regular web hosting plan, it gives you a clean slate to publish all of your files too. Another option for those who don't need advanced capabilities or don't have the knowledge yet to make a website from scratch is an online website builder.
I've covered both options below and tried to list some of the pros and cons of each. Hopefully this will help you make the decision on which path you'd like to take in regards to making a website.
Option 1 - Web Hosting
As I mentioned above this is the most common type of hosting plan because you have full control over the functionality of your site in regards to scripts and SEO. This will require a bit more technical knowledge but after you do it a couple of times you'll find it rather easy.
The great thing these days is it's easy to build a professional website by purchasing a pre-made website template. When you use a template all you need to do is fill in the spaces with your text and images.
Here are the pros of using a full fledge hosting plan:
- Complete control over the look of your site.
- Ability to add additional pages as your site grows.
- Ability to add scripts such as blogs, forms, etc.
- Generous plan sizes that make it extremely affordable
Here are the cons of using a full fledge hosting plan:
- More knowledge of HTML & other programming languages.
- Additional maintenance to update your websites page by page.
- Advanced HTML & CSS knowledge to create professional site w/out a pre-made template.
Before you consider using a free web hosting plan please read my page about things that you may not have considered.
You can find a small list of web hosting companies that I recommend by Clicking Here
Option 2 - Online Website Builder
An online website builder is a program that you log into online. Once you've purchased the plan you simply log into your account and start building your website. You start by choosing 1 of 100's of templates and then start filling in the pages with your content and images. Online website builders come with a built-in web publishing tool that will allow you to publish your website to the server with a click of a button.
Here are the pros of using an online website builder:
- Absolutely no HTML or programming knowledge needed.
- Choose from 100's of professional templates.
- Speed, you can start and finish a website in one evening.
- Affordability, you choose plans based on the number of pages you need so you're not paying for something that you don't need.
Here are the cons of using an online website builder:
- Loss of control of certain aspects like layout, scripting and SEO capabilities.
- Duplicate sites, if other people use the same template that you choose customers could be confused when seeing the same look on multiple websites.