Recipe: Low Cost Web Presence

Today I am going to provide two solutions for creating your own web presence that will keep your operating costs to a minimum and won’t require you to have any servers located at your business. These solutions won’t be perfect for everyone but might work very well for small and medium sized businesses that don’t need some advanced web site features like e-commerce or dynamic content.

 

 Simple Site

 

My hmbconsulting.ca web site is an example of what I am calling Simple Site.

Ingredients

1. A custom domain (ie. mycompany.com)
2. WordPress

Directions

1. Go to godaddy.com, create an account and register your own custom domain.
2. Go to wordpress.com, create an account and then Register a New Blog.

Costs

1. Go Daddy charges $11.77 US per year for a .com domain and $12.75 US per year for a .ca domain. Other options are available on godaddy.com
2. WordPress charges $12 US per year for Domain Mapping so that your custom domain maps to your WordPress blog

Fancy Site

 

 

The Markham Stouffville Hospital Foundation web site www.gala.mshf.on.ca is an example of what I am calling a Fancey Site. Using Showit you can create a web site that will allow you to integrate text, pictures and video content. The Showit service uses Flash to enable animation such as transitions, embed photos and video on your web pages. You can also detect mobile clients such as iPhones and iPads so that you can automatically switch to a HMTL5 version of your web site so that it can be properly display on your mobile phone or any other device that does not support Adobe Flash.

Note: The Showitfast service was built for photographers so that they could create web sites to showcase their work. Generally, photographers don’t want to spend too much time building their web site, so the interface is simple to use and many templates exist so that they can quickly get content onto their web sites. You don’t need to be a photographer to leverage the capabilities of Showit though. Many other companies can take advantage of the multimedia capabilities of Showit promote their products or services.

Ingredients

1. A custom domain (ie. mycompany.com)
2. Showit subscription

Directions

1. Go to godaddy.com, create an account and register your own custom domain.
2. Go to showitfast.com, download and install the Showit client.
3. Launch the Showit client and then create an account.
4. Sign up for a subscription.
5. Choose a style for your site from one of the templates or create your own site from scratch.
6. Add your content to the site.
7. Publish your site.

Costs

1. Go Daddy charges $11.77 US per year for a .com domain and $12.75 US per year for a .ca domain. Other options are available on godaddy.com
2. Showitfast charges $429 per year for 10GB of storage and the web hosting.

There are many other services available that will let you create your web presence and keep it updated while minimizing your ongoing costs.