The first thing you need to decide on is how you will build and maintain your web site. You can hand code it, or use a content management system like WordPress.
Hand coding a website
To hand code a web site you will need somebody with a good working knowledge of at least HTML, CSS and JavaScript. These are the coding methods used to produce almost all web sites these days. But, they need to be competent with the very latest versions in order to make your website stand out.
This coder could be a member, or friend, of the club. Unfortunately, it’s not been our experience that there are many clubs that have such expertise amongst their membership. The alternative is to employ a professional web designer. Sadly, web designers can be expensive. Furthermore, it should be your number one desire to keep your website current and up-to-date – this might not be cheap if you have a professional doing it.
Using WordPress
Alternatively, you could build and maintain the web site yourself. And the truth is – you don’t need to be an expert web designer to build and maintain a web site if you use a content management system (CMS). You will, however, need to be able to devote some time to the building phase and then to maintain it thereafter.
The world’s most popular CMS is WordPress. Our web site was built, and is maintained, using it and it allows you to build a much better web site than you could ever hope to do by hand coding it.
In this series, we will be using WordPress to give you the best chance of building a web site that works and is effective.