Choosing The Right Type Of Website

Flash.

A Flash website consists of entirely all flash. These websites are very interactive and exciting to look at, sorta like web candy. Some of these are my favorites when it comes to web design because it can really draw your message with all the animation and fast movements. It's almost like a commercial. These websites can be fun to make because your imagination can run wild, the down side with flash websites is that its not the best with SEO and using your title tags and keywords within content because flash is in its own world. If the flash website is within an html page than you can still use the meta tags and title otherwise you will have to expose the website through external SEO tactics. Some folks use elements of Flash within their website instead of having an entire website made in Flash. This is a better course of action because you can have your flashy banner in your html or any other type of website and able to optimize the website.

WordPress.

WordPress is a new type of website that was initially used as a blog website to post your articles you blog about and then there is a comment post section so that anyone who reads your article can make comments. In WordPress you have the option to approve or disapprove comments before being posted. There are many options within WordPress to design it to look like a regular website nowadays. WordPress has become very popular among consumers because they can edit their own text on the website without having to pay a web designer to make changes for them. It is pretty easy to maneuver around WordPress with the help from your web designer or by learning easily by looking at text or video tutorials. You can add many open source widgets to your WordPress website.

CMS.

Content Management System is another web content management somewhat like WordPress but a little more advanced. This type of website can be used for companies that need many pages and other elements like ecommerce, forms, blogs, galleries, etc. CMS has many capabilities much more than WordPress and you can even add many ready made items from a CMS library. Among the popular CMS programs out there are Joomla, Magneto, Drupal, MODx, Typo Light but there are many more. There may be a learning curve when teaching your client how to make text edits but as long as the web designer has clear instructions again the client can edit the text themselves. As far as making any changes to the design layout I would leave that up to the web designer.

Ecommerce.

So you wanna have an online store to sell products. There are management systems designed only as an ecommerce store layout such as PrestaShop, Shopify, OpenCart and Zen Cart among others. Some are easier to learn than others but may lack advanced options.
Depending on how advanced the content management system is the product entry, descriptions; setting up costs may be time consuming. When learning this system many clients may let the web designer not only design the website but make the revisions for a while until the client is comfortable making changes themselves.

Database.

A Database website is used for Forums, Chats, Directories, Group, Blogs, Polls. This type of website has it all and is best described like a Facebook, MySpace or any Social Network type of website. There are many programs like Ning, Dolphin, KickApps, GoingOn, PeopleAggregator among many others. Now for this huge project I suggest enlisting both a web designer to design the front end and a programmer to customize the layout and development of the website. This is not something a client can do themselves because it is very advanced and can be customized to your liking but it may cost hefty.