Website Functionality

A basic static website is just a bunch of HTML pages and images linked together. Sometimes though, more functionality is required from your website.

To integrate additional dynamic, interactive or evolving capabilities to your website you will need to write a software program. There are however many such programs or scripts already available on the internet today. Usually these can be easily installed and integrated into your site.

To do so might require a bit more technical knowledge that simply being able to create a static website. Step by step instructions are usually provided along with the script so that you can install it.

Some of the common website functionality that can enhance your website include:

Forms
Allow visitors on your website to fill out a form that is emailed to you. Here's a list of free form scripts.
Site Search - Allow your visitors to search through the contents of your website easily to find what they are looking for. Here's a list of free site search.
Autoresponders - Allow people to opt into your mailing list. Here's a list of free and paid autoresponder services.
Blogs - Wordpress is the best blog software which you can install on your site. Additional plugins can be installed into your blog to enhance it's capabilities.
Photo Albums - Display photos on your website in a photo gallery. Check out these photo gallery options.
Forums - Allow your visitors to interact via a discussion forum.
Guestbooks - Allow your visitors to leve comments on your guestbook.
Articles Management - Easily manage articles on your site. You can use Joomla for this.
Calenders - Display an event calendar on your site.
Shopping Carts - Sell products on your site. You can use oscommerce, zen cart or paid shopping cart solutions for this.

Fantastico is a great tool that is built into some hosting servers like Hostgator. This tool allow you to easily install many fantastic free software/ scripts like forums, guestbooks, photo albums, blogs, content management systems and lots more.

If installing a script seems too intimidating checkout these free addons which you can use to enhance your site by simply adding a bit of code to your pages. Free blog hosts allow you to host the blog on their sites so you don't need to install anything.

Other Useful Tools

Free Anti Spam Email Encryptor - Getting a lot of spam to the email address provided on your website? Encrypt it with this free tool, then simply paste the code into your website.
There are some all-in-one website packages available that provide many of these website functionality built in so you don't need to install the required scripts - they are already installed and can easily be integrated into your site.