Whether you are a small business just starting out, or an organisation which does not currently have the funds to develop or host your own website, you’re probably still investigating ways of getting online in some way or another. It’s a fact of life for most businesses in this modern age, that being online is no longer a luxury but a necessity for anyone wanting to get a message out to a large audience.

A free customizable website just a few clicks away

Don’t fret, there are many ways you can get your hands on a free website which you can customize to suite your needs. Wordpress.com is one of the easiest ways, in my experience, and provides you with a platform from where you can eventually launch your own, fully customized website on your own domain, when you are ready to do so.

All you need to do is go to wordpress.com, sign up for a free wordpress.com account and follow the quick, step by step process. In a matter of seconds you can be online for free and speaking to an international audience. Your new web address will however have wordpress.com attached to it at the end. Once you have some cash in your pocket, registering your own domain(web address) and installing Wordpress is not too much of a mission. You can then export all the content from your freely hosted website and upload it to you new site very easily. Not many other solutions provide this feature.

VeloCITI Cape Town startups using Wordpress

On the VeloCITI business development program I have introduced a few of my collegues starting their businesses to Wordpress. They’re now online and communicating with their markets quicker than they thought they would. Visit them online:

http://rainbowitgen.wordpress.com

http://digitaldocuments.wordpress.com

http://bluerayoutdoor.wordpress.com

Sometimes it’s just a matter of working with what is available as many companies unnecessarily hold themselves back due to lack of budget.

I personally started out blogging in the same way and eventually migrated to my own domain using a freely available theme. I then started modifying the theme to suite my needs and eventually ended up where I am now a few months down the line with some regular daily traffic and over 100 posts to date.

The other nice thing about Wordpress is it’s constantly being improved and upgrading is quite easy. Changing your theme is even easier and adding functionality through freely available plugins makes it a user friendly yet powerful option for many companies big and small.

A few simple benefits of using wordpress:

• Wordpress sites are known to rank high on google searches
• RSS feeds come built in
• Tons of freely available themes with which to change your site’s look & feel
• Free functional widgets available to plugin to your site
• Site contents can be exported and imported easily
• Adding and changing content is just about as simple as writing a word document and saving
• Wordpress sites are more sociable and helps develop important conversations with you target audience
• Wordpress is constantly being updated and upgrades are published for free
• There is a huge community which publishes tutorials, tips, tools and advice and can provide free support on just about any issue related to your Wordpress site
• Wordpress is one of the most user friendly web publishing platforms available today.

So what’s holding you back, if you’re ready to get online quickly and start publishing or promoting yourself, your ideas, your business or your organisation check out wordpress.com right now.

If you have any questions I’ll be happy to answer them or point you in the right direction. If you’re excited about what wordpress has to offer we’re having a wordpress meetup on 28 May 2008 at the Bandwidth Barn in Cape Town which you are welcome to attend. We’ll even help you set up a quick & easy free site if you want to test it out. Visit www.wordpress.org.za for more details on the meetup.

Have a look at a recent client project I just completed where I helped my Praxia Technologies design a self manageable wordpress website. View it at www.praxia.co.za.

I offer wordpress customization, as well as custom wordpress design and development and am a wordpress enthusiast. For more information or a quote contact me on nur@nomad-one.com.

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