Whether you are learning how to design a website by yourself, or if you are thinking of hiring a web designer, you will most likely incur some expenses along the way. Aside from the fees for reserving your domain name and hosting, there is a high possibility of you paying a bit more for the website design alone.
The amount of cash you will fork out will depend on how sophisticated your website will be, whatever functionalities you wish to add, and your project managing skills. While your website is being built, here are some web design strategies and factors that can adjust the overall cost:
Site Generators and Free Templates
Prospective and smart webmasters will obviously opt to use free software to mitigate costs. There are some free site generators over the Internet, including pre-packaged website creation software from a number of major webhosts. These tools alone can enable you to construct a simple and plain website, but the decreased cost harbors some crucial disadvantages. The majority of these free applications only allow a minimal customization and a small number of design templates.
The WYSIWYG Editor
The acronym refers to “What You See Is What You Get”, and it stands for a wide array of CSS and HTML editing programs that allow you to see your website being built as you make changes. These tools vary in functionality and price, but you can often get value that is proportionate to what you pay. Web development specialists can use software like Microsoft Expression (valued at around $350 to $500) and Adobe Dreamweaver (valued at $400). Open source and free tools like Kompozer and Amaya can produce decent results, although they lack the customer support found in commercial development software.
The Content Management System
People who want a bit more functionality than the average WYSIWYG or freeware editor (and have ample knowledge in coding) often turn to content management systems for their websites. You have to install this application in the server, and it normally provides a range of templates and modules to simplify the process of designing the site. The type of CMS you want to use will determine how much you need to pay for it. The open source and free programs include Joomla! and Drupal. You can download WordPress for free but some of the more complex upgrades like customized designs and plugins come at a price.