Once upon a time, you built a website with HTML in a static format. You either coded it in a simple .txt doc or used something a little more fancy like Front Page or Dreamweaver.

Now, your options for building a website are seemingly endless.

There are 5 main types of website building platforms. They are as follows:

1. HTML

Yes, the old-school method is alive and well. You can design and code from scratch or use a HTML template. Your choice. Frankly, I like templates because it saves a lot of time – all that remains is tweaking the site for your needs.

2. CMS

I love CMS platforms such as WordPress and Joomla. There’s Drupal and others, but I’m not familiar with them. CMS platforms make it incredibly easy for anyone to add articles and blogs posts once the CMS platform and it’s design (through templates or themes) are installed. From there you easily add content as much as you want. Better yet, anyone can add content in CMS because no coding knowledge is needed.

3. Flash

Flash undoubtedly creates some of the prettiest and most stunning websites. But, Flash is a complex coding language. You can also get Flash templates, but those are not that easy to customize.

Frankly, I don’t like Flash for 2 reasons:

First, I don’t like websites that have a long load-time. You always know when you end up at a Flash website by the “loading” timer you encounter.

Second, Flash websites aren’t that search engine friendly.

4. Online Website Builders

These are cool and many offer you free websites that are hosted on their server. If you settle with an online website builder, I recommend you pay for a custom domain and spring for hosting. Having a website hosted on another site isn’t very professional.

Online website builders are about as easy-to-use as you get for building a website. You log in, choose a design, and start building your site with drag and drop technology.

5. Website Creator Software

You can buy some sophisticated website creator software that makes it pretty easy to build quality websites. These are good because they result in static websites, which if you don’t need to add content daily or weekly, is a good way not to use too much of your website hosting resources. CMS such as WordPress and Joomla are web hosting hogs.

Next, research then buy website templates, or specifically compare and then buy Joomla templates.