1. Create your own Website
At Low Cost, Low Pain, but Big Gain 1

2. Two Major Approaches from Many
There are now Website development tools that are reliable, reasonably secure and fast in performance.
Many are easy to use and develop with
7 web tools have emerged in the top ranks from these tools
4 Free blogger tools – WordPress.com, Google Blogger, Webs SiteBuilder, Weebly WebBuilder
3 Free hosted CMS software tools – Drupal, Joomla, and WordPress

3. Many Common Features of 7 Top Web Tools
All 7 tools deliver signed and dated Posts with user comments for maintaining a News Blog on your website
All 7 tools provide menu accessible Pages for serving your customers need- About, Contact, Events, Shopping, etc
All 7 tools provide WYSIWYG editors for creating and maintaining those Posts and Pages
All 7 tools have layout templates or themes for designing your website with header, footer, 0-2 sidebars and body. These templates allow for extensive styling of your website elements or segments
All 7 Tools have plugins that allow adding new features.

4. Two Ways to Building Your Own Website - 1
The free, online Bloggers allow users to develop websites with menus, widgets and customized layouts with choice of header, contents, sidebars and/or footer.
The free online bloggers also provide for posts, pages, and media galleries.

5. Two Ways to BYOWebsite – Hosted CMS - 2
The free hosted CMS – provide the same features as free blogs but also have a choice of 10,000 different themes or page templates, 30,000 plugins and thousands of widgets.
But the biggest CMS advantage is the nearly 1 million developers that are savvy in one or more of Drupal, Joomla and /or WordPress and their ability to support your varying needs

6. Overview of Presentation
Your presenter – Jacques Surveyer
Writer, photographer, web-developer
Editor of theOpenSourcery.com [web development tools and tips] and thePhotoFinishes.com [photography and graphics design blog]
30 minute free slideshow
Why Free Blogs are possible
Review of some of the best services
Examples of cost-free websites
5 minutes Q&A
Optional 45 minutes to build your website/blog 6

7. No-Cost Blog/Website No-out of pocket costs for: Domain name
Design and development of the blog/website
Ongoing operating or hosting costs
Storage space up to 3GB free
Bandwidth upto 2GB free
Ad revenues may net $10-50/quarter
Maintaining/updating is easy to do. 7

8. No-Cost Blog/Website: Cautions
But your time to maintain and update, is it truly cost free??? Is that realistic?
There can be a host of expensive extras
Stats, tracking, plugins, extra themes, SEO
Advanced features: custom forms, eCommerce etc
Keeping up – new mobile phones and latest features are often NOT free. 8

9. How is it possible? Blogs make money for Google, Yahoo, etc
Blog/Website creation software is:
very good, open source, plentiful
Give away basics , sell the upgrades
No ads cost $10-30/year
Added storage space is $10-50/year
Added bandwidth is $5-12/year for 1GB
Video, audio, extra widgets and plugins - $5-30
Extra templates, users, database and eCommerce
is more $$$$ 9

10. But No-cost Blogs are Compelling
Professional look with design themes,template
All the features of standalone website
Pulldown menus linked to Web pages and blogposts
2 and 3 column layouts with optional header or footer
Forms for user input and interaction
Widgets for managing the user interface, etc
Flash, video, image galleries, calendars, etc
Links to Facebook, Google Docs and Maps, Twitter, etc
But also some great design and development tools 10

11. Key Idea: Easy to Do and Manage
If you can do Word or with confidence – then you can both create and edit your Website
Great, easy to use tools
To creat and style your own website and blog
To add pages and/or posts to Blog and Website
Manage/administer the website
After a few months you are ready to move up to eCommerce, collaboration or Database and forms driven Websites
Also SEO, Facebook, Google, Twitter features 11

12. No-Cost Blog/Website Tools:Design
Use predesigned templates for design options 12

13. No-Cost Blog/Website Tools:Design
Refine website layout with dozens of easy to choose/change options: 13

14. Your Blog/Website Tools:Import
Import stories and data easily in WordPress 14

15. Your Blog/Website Add/Edit
Create pages or posts[series of stories with comments] easily: 15

16. Your Blog/Website Added Free Features
Google Blogger and WordPress.com have the largest array of free features:
Not just one website and one user/admin but many
Easy to use dashboard to manage all the websites
Dozens of Website/Blog design templates + options
Dozens of Widgets to give Blog/Website a “pro”-look
Ability to create both Web pages and Blog posts
Easy to use Word-like and HTML editors for posts/pages
Many options for showing and controlling comments
Dozens of settings and easy help to control Website
Auto-gathers + displays stats on your website usage 16

17. No-cost Blogs are Compelling
JavaScriptures blog – pro look, no-costs
NearlyFreeWebsites – polished blog+website 17