What do you think, Is developing and designing websites only done by nerds?  This is a totally untrue statement.  People around the world are led to believe that only techno junkies and nerds can deploy a cool website that actually functions correctly.  Many Marketing techniques lead you to believe that you have to hire a highly skilled web developer to create a website for you.  If you look into building a website you will find everything from free to expensive.  If you were smart you would look into the free stuff, but if you have the money by all means don’t let me stop you from hiring a developer.  If you hire a developer take time deciding on who to hire.  You don’t want them stealing your ideas or your money.

As for the thousands of other people out there that want a website including myself, we support Open Source projects.  Open Source means and represents many different things.  You can check out these links to get a better understanding of Open Source.  What Is Open Source, by O’Reilly Media & Wikipedia’s Deffinition.  You see Open Source enables you to have total access to the code.  So if on down the line you decide to hire a developer they can modify the code of Open Source to your liking.

You can find reasonably priced commercial software, but it is encrypted.  This will cause you to rely on the commercial developer of the code to make changes to it or create plugins.  This will limit what you can do with your site.

if you hire a developer to create a custom coded  site just for you, you will have to spend thousands upon thousands of dollars.  This is why Open Source websites are popular and highly recommended.  You get your website for free, and then on down the line if you needed added features you can hire a developer to do small changes for a whole lot less money.  Or you can rally supporters to catch the attention of an Open Source Developer like the thousands of other projects out there.

Your best bet is to go with the most popular projects, to ensure that further development on the project proceeds with time.  This way the project community is very active, so that bugs and security holes are fixed on a daily basis.  Here are a few of the most popular and my favorite projects.  Note that I am discussing projects built in PHP coding.

• Joomla 1.5.9 (1.0 Versions Will Be Obsolete In July 09) – Content Management System that can be used for just about any type of website you want to build.  It has hundreds of extensions and plugins that will enable you to build the website of your choice.  From Commercial, Blog, Directory,social network and Ecommerce it can be molded to fit any avenue, niche or business.
• Wordpress 2.7.X (The Ultimate Blogging Platform) – What can I say, this is the best blogging script available.  It has many plugins and widgets to make it do many different things.  For instance this website is a Wordpress blog.  We have a sms subscription plugin/widget that we downloaded from the script directory at wordpress.org.  You can also do many things with wordpress, but you are limited a little bit since it is designed for simplicity.  Although thats why it is so brilliant and easy to use unlike the more complicated joomla.
• phpBB 3.04 (Most Widley Used Bulletin Board System/Forum) – This bulletin board system is used by some the most busiest sites on the internet.  This shows just how reliable this forum platform is.  You can use it to form communities to talk about different topics in a organized manner.

• Magento 1.2 (Newly Developed Ecommerce System) This system is going to give all the other open source ecommerce projects some good competition.  It is still quite new, but it is possibly the best opensource ecommerce system.  There are only 2 ecommerce systems I would use and this is one of them.  My other choice is VirtueMart for Joomla, but it doesn’t have the capabilities of this option.  Depends on your needs and wants.  Magento will be a project to watch over the coming years.
• Coppermine and Gallery2 (Community Image Management System) There are crossed oponions on which of these is best.  They both are great at what they are meant for.  Which one you use depends on what you like and do not like in the 2 systems.  I have not had enough experience with either of them to really make a decision about it, but I kinda lean towards Gallery2

There are several more projects that would be good starting points for a website.  Content Management

Content Management Systems: Joomla, ModX, Typo, CMS Made Simple, Drupal, Xoops

Blog/Weblog Platform: Wordpress, Nucleus, Text Pattern, Serendipity

Forum/Bulletin Board System: phpBB, Simple Machines Forum, MyBB, Phorum, PunBB, Vanilla

Ecommerce/Online Shopping Platform: Magento, Zen Cart, osCommerce, OpenCart, Freeway, Presta Shop, osCSS

Image Management System: Gallery2, Coppermine, 4Images

Groupware/Project Management: eGroupware, dotProject, ACollab, phpGroupware

Elearning/Online Course Management System: Moodle, ATutor, Dokeos, eFront, Docebo

Wiki (Like wikipedia.org): Doku Wiki, Media Wiki, PM Wiki

You can find demos of all these examples and more at opensourcecms.com.  There you will also find projects built in ASP.NET which have to be run on servers using windows.  There seems to be more support and developers in PHP opensource projects.  Note that web hosting for ASP.NET web sites is usually more expensive than LINUX/LAMP servers.  Most php scripts seem to run best on LAMP setups from my experience.  I think this is due to the fact that they are developed on LAMP setups, but you can run php setups on Windows servers.   I use the LAMP setup.  Cheaper and more dependable.

I also have another tip to make things simpler for the regular joe that isn’t a computer nerd.  Most web hosting providers now provide a script installation control panel, which allows you to automatically install many of the most popular scripts including my favorites above.  You can even use already made templates for Static Websites, which means they are stored in files.  The projects above are Dynamic Sites that query a database server.

So first off if you want to start a web site do some research about some of the things I have talked about.  Then you need to decide on what kind of hosting to get.  I recommend Shared Hosting using Linux.  I also would find a host that uses the software Cpanel for your hosting management.  Make sure that they include Fantastico for free, you will need it to install scripts automatically.  Getting a Shared Hosting account with cPanel and Fantastico is the best way to start learning and experimenting with different website projects.

I just recently switched hosting companies, and I love my new host.  They are more traditional in their way of doing business.  Some may not like it, but it enables them to be more stable and dependable.  If you want to check out who I host with just Click Here.  They have everything hosting plan you could ever need, you will never have to switch hosts because you get to much traffic since they will accommodate any website depending on your needs.  Not many web hosts do business they way My Host does.  Check them out and get a Starter Hosting Package Today to start learning and developing your very own website.

Note: I will post the link to my host in the next couple of days