Small businesses and individuals looking to establish a presence on the web, with the ability to maintain full control over the content themselves without the need to call up a web designer each time a few words need adding, should give serious consideration to Wordpress.

Wordpress is open source, and therefore available free of charge, dramatically reducing web site development costs. Many of the features it provides are exactly the same as those you would find in top of the range paid-for solutions and the majority of most advanced features that are perhaps not included as standard, can be added with ease from the extensive repository of open source plug-ins that are again, free.

Wordpress initially started out as a dedicated blog platform. Whilst it now adapts and works very nicely as a generic web site content management system, it still retains the blog functionality as well, so it is perfect for making announcements and updating web site visitors with the latest news and developments.

This very web site is built on Wordpress.

If considering a new web site and it’s one that doesn’t need all the bells and whistles of an ASX50 company but does need to offer a level of content management, Wordpress is probably the solution. Despite the software itself being free of any price tag, there are a few ingredients that make up the whole Internet presence experience that do attract a cost, namely:

• A domain name so that the web site can be found, for example joesbakerysupplies.com
• A suitable place to store the web site so that it can be accessed publicly, most commonly referred to as web site hosting

Neither of the above need be expensive. Domain names usually cost around AU$15 per year of registration, though that depends on the extension, for example .com/.com.au/.net and so forth. You may already have a domain name though, so no worries there. Hosting companies are ten-a-penny, but for those based in Australia you might like to consider GD Webhosting, who currently host this website.

Wordpress is a PHP based system, so I am available to:

• Install and configure it
• Modify and customise it for your needs
• Create or modify Wordpress themes, also referred to as the web site design

In addition, I can also obtain and register a suitable domain name, and source and set-up web hosting if required. You might say I can do it all for you.

Please feel free to contact me whatever your Wordpress or web site requirements are.