The first element of any web presence is a unique address such as a top level domain like cmswizard.com which now costs as little as $8.95/year in Domain Name Registration Fees. The advantage to a top level domain is that your business can have a unique identity on the web that is independent from any other site. Another option is to subscribe to a hosting, or dialup service that provides a unique address on their domain such as main.nc.us/wildewoods/ which is a folder existing under a top level domain in this case the domain is main.nc.us and the folder is wildewoods. Another kind of address is a subdomain like demoez.cmswizard.com. The second element which goes hand in hand with an address is hosting service. This refers to storage space on a web server which is connected to the internet. Hosting service can be anywhere from free (usually requires you to allow unrelated and potentially obnoxious banner advertising on every page) to more than $200/month for dedicated servers or specialized services. There's no need to spend lots of money on webhosting though. Most needs can be met for $5-$20/month. Once you have a hosting service, you can 'point' a new or existing top level domain name to the nameserver at your host, and you have two thirds of the puzzle complete. The third element is the website itself which can be divided into two components. The graphical components, and the functional components. A simple site consists of an html page for each page that appears in the site. Pictures etc. are separate documents which are included in pages by reference. Hyperlinks are references which take the browser from one page to another. Feedback forms are pages that send the results of input boxes to a processing script. The "static site" as it is called can fulfill the objectives of many organizations. It can contain interactive forms and any kind of media content imaginable. The drawback is that any new content added must be created by someone who has some technical understanding of the web. This method is inefficient if a site needs to be updated often, or grows beyond about 10 pages total. Fill out our web project estimate form In the not so distant past, only companies with web development budgets in the tens of thousands of dollars had access to advanced applications. Largely thanks to the Open Source Community which is responsible for Linux Apache Web servers, extremely robust scripting languages like PHP, open source database systems like MySQL and the many open source web applications that use these resources such as Drupal, Joomla, OSCommerce, and Typo3, the development and management of more sophisticated sites has become much more accessible. Many companies would benefit by having multiple user groups such as clients, administrators, and customers, each with access to specific parts of the site. Simple shopping carts connected with large catalogs of products and services with inventory management and order tracking can be very lucrative. Banner ad and link management as well as public or private forums can be invaluable in other cases. For those in need of any or all of these functions, there is one very appropriate solution. Typo3 is an Open Source (free) Content management System that will fulfill most needs with very little customization. The best thing about Typo3 is it can look any way you want, in fact it can have multiple looks and menus for different areas of a site with the greatest of ease.