Entrepreneur Tools That I Use and Recommend
Do It Yourself Websites for Entrepreneurs
- For more advanced users and websites
- Drupal Gardens is the most powerful platform I have found for non-developers to create flexible, high performance websites. If you want to build a community website, you really can't do better. There is a steep learning curve, especially if you've never worked with Drupal itself. But if you are willing to put in the time, it gives you much of the power of Drupal itself without nearly as much hassle and need to know programming languages and jargon. The back end, including all upgrades and maintenance, is taken care of for you. If you have minimal requirements, you can have a free site, although chances are that you will want one of the paid packages. This site is built on Drupal Gardens and I have been continually impressed by the continuing innovation and great tech support offered at $24/month.
- For entrepreneurs who want to minimize the time spent creating and maintaining their website
- If I did not have a community site, chances are I would have used Squarespace (affiliate link) instead. Squarespace is the most elegant non-developer platform I have found to date (and I have tried most of them). Creation of a clean, attractive site with static pages, galleries, blogs, and many other features can be done quickly and easily. If you have never built a website, they've got a very good collection of support videos to walk you through the process (so does Drupal Gardens). It's also very easy to maintain even by those with limited computer skills after a brief introduction.
- For entrepreneurs who just need a blog or need e-commerce or other specialized capabilities
- Neither Drupal Gardens nore Squarespace have an integrated shopping cart capability. Instead, you have to insert links from PayPal or your merchant bank or find a third party shopping cart capability. Same goes for management of mailing lists, autoresponders and the like. Many of my colleagues with online businesses swear by WordPress but only if you use a premium theme. There's a temptation to just use the free themes, of which there are many, but if you are building a business, you will find them more annoying than useful in my experience. For sales pages, you can try Optimize Press; for blogs I understand that the Genesis theme by Studio Press is user friendly and powerful. There are also thousands of plug-ins for WordPress that add great funcitonality such as an editorial calendar for bloggers that the other platforms don't have. On the down side, WordPress is a target for hackers precisely because it is so popular.
Domain Name Services
- For more advanced users
- To have a website with a custom domain name (like www.planoandsimple.com or www.amazon.com), you need to buy and register a domain name. Most people will go with the cheapest option possible for hosting their website and registering their domain name, and that is usually a pretty safe solution (see GoDaddy below). However, as with most services, you get a lot of value with the right provider even if you are paying more money. Squarespace is designed to work almost transparently with Nettica. Domain name registration will cost you $20/ year, same as it will cost you elsewhere if you don't buy a hosting package - but here's where the real value comes in: with one click, you can get it set up to point to your Squarespace site and it's just about as easy for any other hosting platform. Even better, there is one-click set up for Google Apps, which is a killer capability for entrepreneurs (see Business Applications). I know pretty much nothing about managing domain names, but with these one click presets and really strong tech support, I've had no problem and am very happy with the reliability and functionality I've gotten in return.
- For entrepreneurs who are willing to sacrifice power and support for ease of use and budget pricing
- Pretty much any website host will be happy to manage your domain name for you, including registering it. Tech support can be tricky to reach, I don't know of any that offer one click presets for Google Apps (though I haven't done much of a search - most of them would prefer their users to stay away from the domain name settings and services), and if they decide to hold your domain name hostage it can in my experience take a lot of effort to move it to another DNS platform. But chances are it will work fine.
Website Hosts
- For Drupal Gardens and Squarespace users
- Drupal Gardens and Squarespace are both hosted solutions, so hosting is included in any package you use. Pricing ranges from free in some cases to $12 - $36/month depending on how many features you want to use.
- For WordPress, Drupal and other platform users
- Most website platforms are not hosted, so you will need to find a company that provides hosting that is compatible with whatever platform you'd like to use. Most major hosting companies support WordPress, Drupal and Joomla (another open source platform for community sites that is a bit easier to learn than Drupal but not as powerful). Most also have a proprietary website builder. Other platforms are hosted but that I do not use or recommend because I find them too inflexible and annoying to use include Google Sites and Intuit Business Sites.
- Most website platforms are not hosted, so you will need to find a company that provides hosting that is compatible with whatever platform you'd like to use. Most major hosting companies support WordPress, Drupal and Joomla (another open source platform for community sites that is a bit easier to learn than Drupal but not as powerful). Most also have a proprietary website builder. Other platforms are hosted but that I do not use or recommend because I find them too inflexible and annoying to use include Google Sites and Intuit Business Sites.