It is easier now than ever before to get a website. You can practically throw one up yourself with no training and no web design background. With some popular content management systems on the market – WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, et. al. – you can build a site from scratch without knowing any HTML or code. And many web hosts offer sitebuilders for free. Sign up, pay your small monthly hosting fee, and start building. Easy, right?
Yes, easy. But not necessarily a benefit.
There is still search engine optimization to contend with. And just because you can build a site with no knowledge of web design doesn’t mean you should. Surveying websites built by designers and non-designers, even designers who use content management systems, there is still a big difference. And it’s noticeable.
Let’s face it, good web design requires specialized knowledge in the following areas:
- Search engine optimization
- Graphic design
- HTML (hypertext markup language) – Even if you use a content management system to build your website, a working knowledge of HTML is helpful.
- CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) – Again, even with a content management system, you might want to make some tweaks to your site sitewide and a working knowledge of CSS will be helpful.
- JavaScript and PHP – Two more coding languages that can be helpful.
- Working with images
- Copywriting
- Sales – Writing for the web is selling; if you can’t write sales copy then you’ll need to hire someone who can.
- Web standards
- Online marketing strategies
As you can see, there is a lot to learn when doing it yourself. You can take the time to learn it and fail by trial and error a few times until you succeed, or you can hire a guide to help you. Web design isn’t going away any time soon. If anything, experts in web design will always be needed.
WordPress has come a long way since its first introduction. Over the years the blogging software has earned a solid reputation for being an easy-to-use platform with better than average SEO benefits for users. One of the cool things about WordPress is its world class support and the never ending list of plugins available. But I’d say that in the last year WordPress has stepped out as one of the top content management systems on the market and one of the things that makes it so useful is the ability to design a great web site using only the tools available in the package.
In the old days web designers would borrow an off-the-shelf WordPress theme and that served a useful purpose. But in the last couple of years a few savvy web designers have developed premium themes that anyone can purchase and those themes offer benefits that are not available with off-the-shelf themes. One benefit is the ability to actually design a custom website with strong SEO benefits. WordPress can actually be used to build a website without a blogging feature, which makes it a robust content management system deserving of the best respect.
When it comes to web design today, you don’t even need to know HTML. You can use a CMS like WordPress with a snazzy premium theme and design your site like a pro. I think that’s awesome.
You’ve decided to build a website to promote your business online. You don’t have a huge budget and you have limited technical skills. Should you build an HTML website or use a content management system?
There are pros and cons to doing it either way. But I’d say if you are a small business and you are on a tight budget then you might consider a content management system (CMS).
You are likely going to pay someone to set it up for you if you don’t have a lot of technical skills yourself. But you’d pay someone to design you a website using HTML as well. Either way, there’s an expense. And it costs about the same for HTML or a CMS design. The big difference, however, is in the ongoing maintenance.
With an HTML website, every time you want to update it you’d have to pay someone to update your website for you. It may not be much, but it’s an expense. With a CMS, once the initial set up is done, you can upload your content yourself. Just log in to the CMS and input your content. You can do that on your own and it won’t cost you a penny.
The only time a CMS will cost you is when performing routine maintenance or when fixing a periodic problem that requires technical skills you don’t have. Otherwise, ongoing expenses are less than for an HTML site.
