You’re thinking about creating a home based business online and of course your first step, after writing your business plan, is to create a website for your products. You’ve thought about outsourcing this task to a professional web page designer but you really can’t afford the cash outlay at the moment. However, considering the time involved with such an undertaking and with your limited knowledge of website design and construction you decide to take the plunge and hire a professional.
When you finally have your finished product and you are now officially a home business website owner there are several associated technologies you should familiarize yourself with and, at the very least, know the basics of in order to be able to take care of basic web page maintenance and upkeep.
1. HTML or Hyper-text Markup Language is the most basic of the four technologies and something you should know in order to be able to make changes to your website and to upload these changes. If you don’t have this knowledge every time something very basic needs to be done you’ll have to hire a professional and wait until they’re available to upgrade your site. So the only sensible solution is to learn the basics of HTML to alleviate your concerns and to save your money.
There are many excellent resources available to help you get started including other websites on the web. Take a look at their design and then look at and study their source code to help you get familiar with the process. Alternatively there are many tools online which don’t require technical know how, such as HTML, to operate which can generate web pages and create entire business sites from start to finish.
2. After having learned the basics of HTML, if you choose to do so, the next step is to look into CGI (Common Gateway Interface) and CGI BIN. This technology allows you to interact with and communicate with your customers and potential clients through surveys, forms, and shopping carts placed on your website. Knowing how to employ CGI allows you to put a professional face on your home business website by putting the finishing touches on your web page. Once again there are many resources available online to help learn this technology.
3. PHP or PHP Hypertext Preprocessor is a scripting language to help you write CGI programs.
It is commonly used to create dynamic Web pages and with syntax from C, Java and Perl, PHP code is embedded within HTML pages for server side execution. It is commonly used to extract data out of a database and present it on the Web page.
4. Finally, javascript is the show man of the four technologies. This code or language is responsible for any special effects you place on your home business website. You can use this scripting code to create flashing banners, splash screens, pop-ups and to display date and time and provide password security for your site.
So as you can see just having a basic knowledge of all four of these technical skills can provide you with the independence to maintain and upgrade a professional looking home business website while at the same time save you money which would otherwise be spent on professional web page designers.