Jamison White's Blog Just another WordPress.com site

I have had a couple non-profits and small company startups ask me for web site advice.  My advice is always the same start small add features as needed. I think HostGator + WordPress is the perfect solution for this.

Most startup web sites only need:

1. News/Press Releases
2. Contact Form
3. Mission statement/About page
4. Basic email
5. Basic email list
6. Web traffic tracking

Web Hosting

My preferred hosting company is HostGator.com. Their starter packages are great.  They do not overload their servers. They actively install updates and security patches. They offer cPanel hosting, more on this later.

Email

HostGator allows you standard POP/SMTP email hosting. You may need to futz with the spam filtering a bit (or when your budget allows go to AppRiver.com).

HostGator also has Mailman. It is a full feature mailing list server. Warning, it is a techy product so you might want to get some help setting up your list. However once your list are setup they are very self service.

Blogging Software

WordPress will do what you need. (This site is WordPress) Pages, categories, RSS feeds, image uploads, one-click updates, etc. Also there are tons of free or inexpensive themes available. cPanel has one-click install of WordPress. No fiddling around with databases, PHP, permissions, etc.

Finding an attractive theme is pretty easy. But, you may need some minor tech help here. Most theme’s have a header image that you should modify with your companies name and logo. Also you will need to use FTP to get the theme into your web site.

I will go into how I have structured my site in another post.

UPDATE: Nael saw this and sent me a link to something interesting. SquareSpace looks cool and fast. The programmer in me worries that you give up too much control with it though.