Not long ago, a friend of mine sent me an email asking for my opinion on whether a site he was developing should be done using Wordpress, LAMP, or ASP.NET. I've used all of those, but have always been so focused on the details and learning them that I never really thought about the great question of "What technology should be used for a given site?". That is such a good question that I decided to put my thoughts on paper and help provide some education to others.

Some people don't have the skills and ability to actually be able to choose the most appropriate technology. They know one thing and that is going to have to be made to work in all cases. That's not necessarily bad, but it's nice to be able to switch between technologies based on the type of site. The important thing to realize in web site development is that one technology does not fit all.

Wordpress

I have several web sites currently running Wordpress. I originally thought of Wordpress as just a blogging platform. While that is certainly its main use and what it is optimized for, you can definitely use it to create a more "traditional" looking web site. It is very configurable and there are tons of custom plug-ins available that can allow you to add RSS feeds, SEO tags, voting, etc. Since Wordpress is developed using PHP and MySQL, it is also possible to create your own plugins and customize your site template. Oh, and that's the other incredibly awesome thing about Wordpress -- the templates! There are literally thousands of free Wordpress templates available for download. If you can't find one that fits the theme of your site than you aren't looking hard enough.

Another nice thing about Wordpress is that you can easily find web hosting providers that support Wordpress. In most cases, you can click an install link and have Wordpress properly installed on your site in a few seconds. Then you go to the Wordpress admin console and configure your site. It is all very easy. You can upload multiple templates and easily switch between them. It is also easy to make minor changes to the templates (like changing tag lines, colors, etc.).

The other benefit of Wordpress is that it is a blogging platform and the search engines love blogs. You can configure your Wordpress install to automatically ping one or more blogging services whenever you add a new post or page. That way they know your site has changed and they should come index your site again. If you want your site to be found then using Wordpress as the underlying engine is a good option.

LAMP

In case you don't know, LAMP stands for Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP, which is a very common and powerful set of technology components used for building web sites (and did I mention completely Open Source and free!). If you want complete control over your web site, then LAMP is a good option. There are plenty of examples, free scripts, etc. available on the web site to help you get started. There are also plenty of free editors and tools to help you along. The downside of LAMP is that it is hard for you to create your own development "environment". Since most of us run some flavor of Windows as our desktop operating system, we would need to use something like VMWare or Virtual PC to create a virtual machine running Linux. The next challenge is getting all of the components properly installed. While the installers for the LAMP components have definitely improved, they still don't compare to the ease of installing a Windows-based application. The next challenge with LAMP is debugging. It would be nice if we all wrote perfect code, but the reality is you need the ability to debug. There are PHP debuggers available. A good one is going to cost you some money though.

One of the best things about LAMP is that there are TONS of web hosting providers out there for you to pick from. The reason is quite simple -- LAMP is completely open source, so it there is very little cost for the hosting company to bear. That means more margin for them!

ASP.NET

Microsoft's contribution to web site development is ASP.NET. You can use any .NET language (C#, VB.NET, Python.NET, etc.) to develop an ASP.NET based site. In my opinion, the best thing about ASP.NET is the fact you can use Microsoft Visual Studio for you development tool. Visual Studio is the best tool out there. Yes, it costs money, but you definitely get what you pay for. The other nice thing about ASP.NET is that you can easily develop on your Windows-based desktop or laptop.

It is harder to find a good ASP.NET hosting provider. Believe me, I've looked! And I've used several different ones. The ASP.NET providers lag behind the LAMP providers in terms of what they offer. You also need to be careful and really understand what the provider means by things like "host unlimited # of domains". In many cases they just mean you can have an unlimited # of domains point to your single web site. That probably isn't what you want.

I mentioned the use of Visual Studio before. That tool is awesome and makes development SOOOO much easier. I did quite a bit of development using LAMP and got some sites up and running. I used Eclipse with a PHP plug-in and it worked pretty good. I didn't have Apache running or Linux, so couldn't really debug but I still managed. When it came time to create a more advanced web site, however, I quickly decided to switch over to ASP.NET and use Visual Studio. Debugging was a snap and the coding was made much easier thanks to Intellisense and Visual Studio's ability to "import" web services and make them easier for me to call from my code.

Making the Right Choice

Each of the technology options has pros and cons. If you want to get a site up quickly and it will be displaying basic information (text, images, video) then Wordpress is a great option. If you want a more advanced web site but don't want to spend much money on development tools, then LAMP is the best choice. Finally, if you already have Visual Studio or know .NET programming, then ASP.NET is a good option. If you're really lucky and can know all three then you can use the right tool for the job no matter what.

Nowadays a quality website is proven to be a key tool for spreading information about a company, its services and products to a vast audience across the Globe. But what is a quality website? It seems, there is no a simple answer to the question. Still there exist some general factors that determine the quality of a website and therefore its success.

An appealing design, comfortable navigation and quick website loading definitely attract visitors. The more difficult task is to convert visitors to clients and keep them coming back. This can be done by providing high quality content and updating the website on a regular basis. However for a website owner it can become a serious problem, as website maintenance requires technical skills and programming knowledge.

Of course, there are a lot of companies providing a variety of web mastering services such as news or upcoming events additions, product list changes and additions, photos, graphics and text additions and updates, and more. It all seems to be ideal but for one thing: as a rule, their prices are very high and not always affordable for small businesses.

Another solution to the problem of website maintenance is the implementation of a Content Management System, also known as CMS. It is an application combining web-based tools, web templates and a database in order to manage a content of a website. Content Management Systems are perfect for websites that require constant updates and additions.

CMS usually have user-friendly interface giving freedom for text editing, as well as for image managing. In fact, one of the main advantages of these systems is that you will be able to manage a web site's content without having to study web programming and deal with time-consuming technical tasks. All necessary website modifications and updates will be done immediately, no matter where you are: at your workplace, at home, or on vacations. You will just need a computer connected to the Internet.

There are a lot of different CMS packages available, some of them are free or open source, and some are commercial. A commercial Content Management System has a number of advantages, not the least of which is a guarantee of professional tech support and the possibility of development of specific extensions personally for your website. Commercial software is usually associated with a relatively high degree of safety as opposed to open source. So, if a website owner has the resources to purchase such a system, then it can be the safest way.

CMS also vary by structure and features. For example, Content Management Systems that use module architecture can be tailored to suite the needs of almost any website, be it a business site, an online shop, or a multilingual portal. These CMS offer additional modules and extensions covering up assorted functions. It may be a good choice for those website owners who are planning to expand their business and widen the range of their web services in future.

On the whole, the implementation of a CMS is a perfect solution for a wide variety of websites. Content Management Systems make it much easier for non-technical users to add, edit, and update their content on websites. It also helps to save a good sum of money as website owners do not have to pay a web master for their website maintenance.

With billions upon billions of people on the Earth and an estimated fifty seven million square miles of land, who would have thought that it would be possible to interact with virtually every single person from the comfort of your home or office. No, I'm not talking about talking to them over the phone or writing to them by mail but being able to interact with them via the Internet. Now more than ever, more and more people own computers with Internet connections and are surfing the web.

With billions of Internet users jumping from site to site, there will be those that will stumble upon your website. The question is, do you know anything about those website visitors? Are you getting detailed reports about your web visitors? If not, then as a webmaster you need to seek out the proper website visitor tracking software.

One that will be able to tell you everything about your visitors, like what they're doing when they visit your site or how long they are staying on your website? What links are they clicking? All these questions and more need to be answered. So if you are going to use a visitor tracking software, you might as well use the best. Provided by the advertising behemoth Google incorporated, Google Analytics is just the tool to use.

Google is a multi-billion dollar company that has resources to craft an excellent website visitor tracking software for all webmaster everywhere. This versatile services has an array of features including fast implementation, geo-targeting, customizable dashboards and more. The best part about Google Analytics is that its free. Any and every webmaster can afford the service. So if you are looking for a website visitor tracking software, I highly recommend Google Analytics.

If you are wondering why it is important to keep track of your website visitors, here are few reasons why. First, if you know important information like what your top exit pages are, then you can optimize those pages to preserve your traffic. Secondly, if you have ads on your website, you can use the site overlay feature to see what links your visitors tend to click on the most and reposition those links and place ads there to increase your ad revenue exponentially.

You see, Google Analytics can provide you with tons of valuable information. Information which can increase the productivity and effectiveness of your website. But I must say that there may be some what of a learning curve to the service. You may need to visit the Google help center or watch high quality training videos from programs like GlyticVideos. Once you've gotten a great understanding of Google Analytics, then you can fully utilize and get the most out of the service.