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Starting your first company website, or revamping an old one, can be both exciting and frustrating at the same time. With so many choices to make and options to choose from, even the most seasoned business owner can become discouraged. So today we thought we’d bring you a few well-founded best practices that you may want to consider.
Free is Good AND Bad!
When it comes to building your business website, the free and open-source WordPress is arguably the best thing to come along since Al Gore invented the internet. The user interface is simple to learn and easy to use, giving you control over the layout, content, and design of your site. Updates regularly come out and there are hundreds of free ‘themes’ that you can quickly and easily obtain and with the free price tag, there are hundreds of pages of information regarding the use of WordPress.
However, the last 3 words you want to associate with your website are free web hosting. While there are indeed options available that will gladly host your WordPress site for free, you will generally find that you get what you pay for and that the features you really need are only included with ‘premium’ packages or on an à la carte type purchase system. Affordable WordPress hosting like that available with BionicWP is definitely the route you want to take. With included features such as WordPress support, 90 days of off-site backups, daily malware scans, real-time uptime monitoring and much more, the advantages over free web hosting is extreme.
Selecting a Content Management System
Java, PHP, and Perl are a few of the content management frameworks that many CMS options are built on top of. Attempting to design your site by hand with these frameworks generally means that you have to actually know or learn that specific language or purchase software that while helping you with the coding, can severely limit your creativity with small selections of ‘templates’ or other restrictions.
Apache Roller, XWiki, and Hippo CMS are systems with Java as their framework and WebGUI, EPrints and Foswiki utilize Perl but there are multiple options available that are both open source and available for purchase.
PHP is by far the most popular framework these days and there is a wide selection of open source options available. Backdrop CMS, Dotclear, and Geeklog are among the choices but there are literally dozens of downloads available. However, you may find your hosting options limited based on your CMS choice so be sure to fully do your homework before making a final decision.
WordPress is widely considered the best and most popular PHP CMS choice as it is designed to help you organize, display and customize the content on your website. With hundreds of free themes available, WordPress allows you to manage how every image, link and text section appears on your site.
Take The Time To Review
Don’t rush into anything! Visit websites of competitors and see what they are doing right and wrong. Make an outline of what pages your site will need (e.g. About Us, FAQ, Contact Us, etc). Write down your top 5 domain name choices and ask friends, family, employees and even customers which ones are best in their opinion. After you’ve done your research, take a step back and look at the info as a whole. Think of the long-term; what makes the most sense for your company and goals?
One huge tip is to always ensure that your host provides regular backups. If your site isn’t backed up you could spend anywhere from hours to days or even weeks trying to recover or rebuild your content. This is one of the biggest reasons not to go with a free web hosting provider, especially for your WordPress site. The downtime along with the man hours spent recouping the data loss can be extremely costly.
Why You Need BionicWP
People are flocking to BionicWP simply because we provide the best hosting with the best options, at the best prices. Expert support that is available when you need it, 90 days worth of off-site backups, daily malware scans, real-time uptime monitoring and an array of package options that are suited for whatever your eCommerce or business website desires are.
Call BionicWP today to get secure web hosting for your small business website for as little as $100 a month. Need something a little more? For less than $250 a month you get:
- Unlimited 30-min or less tasks, meaning we’ll answer your questions about anything regarding your WordPress site
- Up to 2 hours of WordPress Pro Support
- 90-days of Off-Site Backups
- Real-Time Uptime Monitoring
- Daily Malware Security Scans
- WordPress Core, Theme & Plugin Updates
At BionicWP, we also offer Managed WordPress Hosting! For just $500 a month we provide the above features in addition to the following:
- Clean & Easy To Use App
- Simple Widget Generator
- Neat Dashboard With Settings
- Helpful Live 24/7 Support
- Transparent Pricing Structure
- And Much More
What are you waiting for? Call BionicWP for more information or to start down the road to your new business website today!
