Step 2 - Choose Website Building Tools

[This is Step 2 of the Website Building Tutorial]

It is a good idea to decide on the tools you will use to build your website early on. This will help you make other technical decisions along the way.

To decide which tools/ software are the best to use for your website ask yourself some of these questions:

Is it a blog?
Will it have a lot of articles? Would a content management system (CMS) be a good option?
Do I need to have complete control on every aspect of my site?
Do I need any functionality built into the site?

If you want to build a blog you can do so using WordPress which is a free blog software.

Joomla is a free content management system which you can also use to build your website. Joomla also has many extensions that you can easily install to exapand its functionalities.

Both Wordpress and Joomla can be easily installed via Fantastico (literally with the click of a button!) which is available when you sign up with a web host like Hostgator (which is what I use). Then it is simply a matter of putting in your content. For more details on installing them, refer to the links in the related resources section below.

If you need to have complete control over your site, using an HTML editor coupled with a graphic editor would be the best option. Dreamveaver and Fireworks are my favorites. This site has been built using these software. Detailed tutorials on using these software to build your site are provided on this site. Check out the related resources section below.

You can also use Flash to build your website especially for animations. There are advantages and disadvantages of using Flash. Again check out the related resources section below for detailed tutorials on using this software.

There are some good service providers who give you all you need to create websites without having much technical knowledge. Site Build It is one such comprehensive solution. Read a comprehensive review of Site Build It.

Some hosting service providers like Hostgator also provide a free site builder that you can use to build your site.

From this point on this tutorial is focused on the process used to create a website using an HTML editor and graphic editor, however most of the steps will be useful no matter which site builder your choose.