Website Basics

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Written by Cai Thomas

I am of a different view point, I believe you should invest time rather than money in developing a website. I have recently built a rather simple but highly effective website for The Alternative Bathroom Company LTD who are based in London. My old boss there Colin asked me to build a basic site when I left based on a CMS.

I decided on Joomla and modified one of the more basic templates to create a content rich website with what I would consider the basics and a few nice extras that push it up the rankings.

The list is by no means a complete list, but is a good starting point of things to include in your website when you use a CMS.

  • Choose a good free CMS like Joomla or Drupal
  • Buy a nice template from a template site like Template Monster
  • Add your own pictures and text
  • Keep a blog of your activities, news or jobs. It may seem boring to you, but it adds content, your company name and more importantly it shows that you are active.
  • Add a contact page
  • add a decent about us page with profiles if possible
  • Get your suppliers or customers to give you inbound lists
  • Add a current customer list.
  • Add a testimonials page.
  • Add a products section, if you sell physical products then this should be in the form of a shopping cart such as Oscommerce. This can have the purchase function turned off. Either way it adds a great deal of content to your website.
  • Don't forget the very basics
    • Add a dynamic meta tag generator
    • submit your site to the search engines
    • Post your website address on as many free directories as you can.