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Power Up Your Budget Website

by Burt Abreu

1. Try to get a hosting company that supports scripting - mine allows PHP - and the creation of databases. Many hosting companies offer simple page generators, to hide all complexity from beginners, but these are often cookie cutter pages that are self limiting. You can run a site without scripting, using HTML templates and such, but having some scripting ability will increase what you'll be able to do.

2. See what addons are included with your hosting company. Some provide consoles and scripts, that you can easily activate to add forums, contact forms, galleries, statistics and other features.

3. Next, if your site is content based (as opposed to being only images) you should consider setting up a CMS or Content Management System. Most include simple interfaces so that you can create new sections on your site, add pages, write content using a word editor type interface, create links, manage users and more. I use Website Baker. It has a few less bells and whistles than some of the giants like PHPNuke, but it is very well supported, has all the key features and is very easy to use.

4. Take advantage of RSS. RSS is a simple format to allow syndication of content. Not only can you provide a feed of your news -that others can view on their sites which will help drive traffic - but you can pull outside content related to the focus of your site. I am currently using CaRP Evolution to handle all my RSS display feeds. There is a free limited version available but I prefer the full version because I want the extra power.

I have begun pulling feeds from game sites, affiliate sites like Amazon.com, DeviantArt, YouTube videos, job sites and much more. Look around my site. On the net content is king. It is what attracts search engines, and visitors, to your site. If you don't want to spring for CaRP consider MagpieRSS or Google the many other free options.

5. Check out some of the free services online, that allow you to add features without impacting your own bandwidth. Many budget accounts offer limits on bandwidth usage and storage. As an example take a look at Google. I currently use their free Picasa Web Album service to host my gallery images. I put thumbnails of the images, using CaRP and RSS, on my site but when people click on the links it launches my Picasa page. Image files can take a lot of space and bandwidth so you might consider offloading some of your images to Google, or Flickr if it will work for your audience.

Some of the other services you might want to look at ...

• Google Web Page Creator - You can use this to create simple pages with text, images, Google Docs and Google Gadgets. Here is a simple test page.  You might use an iframe to frame these pages and make them look like part of your site. Perhaps you can use them as Help pages, FAQ, or to archive topics and serve them up in a popup window. Either way you'll save some bandwidth if you have a limited account.
• Google Sites - Use templates, tie in other Google features -like calendar, docs- and adjust settings to decide who can access and share information on your group web site.
• Google Docs - Create documents, spreadsheets and presentations -and allow others to collaberate. You can see a simple presentation on the test page above. Imagine using this to display a step-by-step procedure for a recipe, craft, computer repair or other process.
• Forums and Groups - If you have a site that would be benefit from a user community then you might want to add a forum or discussion group. Properly managed these can be used to drive traffic and create buzz. Google Groups is one offering. phpBB has free software you can use to host your own -with several providers on their site offering hosting for $5 month.

If you have a content driven site consider something like AddThis to allow people to promote your site on the many social networks. Need to monitor pages on your site to see if the site goes down? Check out Montastic. Does your site need a help desk? Check out the free version of Mojo Help Desk. Want to make sure there are no dead links on your site? Use the online LinkChecker. If you search around you can find almost anything.

There are also several sites that will host your files. These can be used to host or mirror large files - encourage the users to download, first from the remote file service, and your link last. If half of your users use the mirror you can save considerable bandwidth. There are some conditions on how long some will keep files so be sure to consider that. Here are two you can check out FileSavr and FileDen. Don't forget to check out speciality sites related to your content. For example, DeviantArt will host free art related content - like Photoshop brushes and textures - so an art site could use them as an alternate download site for their files.

6. Add Interactivity. There are many sites around the net that offer bits of drop in code and scripts. For starters check out HotScripts and DynamicDrive but I have found tidbits all over. For example, I got some Tooltips for my search page from this article at CSSGlobe and there are many goodies listed at SmashingMagazine.

7. Get statistics. If your site is busy enough and you want to know more about your visitors check out Google Analytics. You can get a sense of what pages users are viewing, how long they stay, where they came from, what browsers they use and what countries they are from.

8. Make money. Depending on the content on your site you might consider using affiliates like Amazon, BigFishGames, CafePress and others to add stores, and sell goods that match your site's focus.

You can sell goods using various services. For example their is a simple store module available for Website Baker CMS that allows you to sell stuff and recieve money via PayPal. Amazon Services has a flat fee service that is about $39 at the time of this articles publication. Many hosting companies offer Merchant accounts that include some type of store creation software and the ability to collect payment.

I saw a skit on TV many years ago, when ATM machines were still fairly new. It showed a customer using the machine to withdraw money and behind the wall were several bank employees performing the transaction, and stuffing bills back through the slot. It was funny and illustrates the point I am trying to make. Your site visitors will only see the interface of your site. If the content is interesting and you can make everything work well together that will be enough for most of your visitors. Just remember that as with art, less is often more -meaning only add features that make sense and enhance the site. Don't fall into the trap of adding features just for the sake of having a million bells and whistles.

I hope this article has given you a few ideas.