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Is it Time to Graduate to a Real Web Site?
Posted by Erik | Filed under Web Development
It keeps getting easier and easier to express yourself online, but when even your Great Aunt is sending out Facebook polls and Tweets several times a day, you have to wonder what we are all getting out of it.
Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace are all good ideas and serve their purpose: to allow ANYONE to have their own little space on the Web and to help them interact with other users of the same service. When there are over 200 million Facebook users, you know that they have hit on something. But what are all of those people doing?
The majority of them don’t have anything to say. Most of what goes into those social networking sites is what-I-ate-for-breakfast type stuff and friendly banter. But what if you DO have something to say? Is some corner of a social networking behemoth the best place to do it?
In a word, no. Your Great Aunt doesn’t care about what you really have to say and neither does half of the graduating class of ’72. If you are looking to really discuss a topic, educate people, or share your expertise, it is time to graduate to a real web site.
The Benefits of a Real Web Site
With a real web site, you enjoy a number of benefits that you can’t get from social networking: control, respect, exposure, and opportunity.
Control
When it is your web site on your web host, you are in full control. You decide what it looks like, how it works, what sort of tools are available, how the content is structured, and who can see it.
Respect
Writing on people’s wall doesn’t command respect. It is an informal exchange. But the difference between having a profile and having a web site is like the difference between selling something from the back of your car versus a storefront on Main Street. The difference speaks volumes about who you are and what you are about.
Exposure
Anyone who is serious about marketing an idea, product, or themselves should have their own web site. Once you do, you can craft your message for any outcome you wish. Plus, you do it with your own domain name!
Opportunity
Once you have these other benefits, you are free to seize opportunities. You can share your ideas, sell your product, sell someone else’s product, learn more about web sites and web development, etc. Your web site is what you make of it.
How do I Create a Web Site?
So maybe you are ready to graduate. The whole world is waiting to hear your message, but you don’t have a web site and you don’t know where to start.
The secret is that with the proliferation of high quality and inexpensive web hosting services and the evolution of powerful, free blogging software such as WordPress, you have a combination that far exceeds the quality of any other option.
WordPress
Never heard of WordPress? WordPress is the most popular and easy to use free blogging software available today. It has all of the options and power necessary to power any blog or web site and to do it as well as any other web site you have seen. In fact, many of the most popular web sites and blogs already run on WordPress!
As great as it is, the process of installing and configuring WordPress both correctly and securely takes research and time.
The question you’ve got to ask is do you have the time to learn to properly install blog software? If you are like most people, you have enough going on to care about how to setup a blog – you just want to start blogging!
Enter FreeBlogInstalls.com
FreeBlogInstalls.com is a safe, secure, and professional blog installation and configuration service. In exchange for using one of their tested and proven web hosting partners, they will take care of installing and configuring WordPress for you. For free.
They will even set up custom email addresses of your choice and install some of the most popular WordPress plugins and themes.
So with the exception of signing up for a web hosting company, there is nothing you have to do to graduate to the next level. What are you waiting for? Start your web site today!
Tags: Wordpress
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