2. Build

Once upon a time, websites were built using something called HTML, which is short for "hypertext markup language". HTML was invented long before anyone dreamed of making websites look good or do all the cool things they can do today. Though there are still people who rely mainly on HTML to build websites, if you want beauty and functionality, a dynamic, database-driven content management system is the way to go.

The great thing about dynamic websites is that form and function are separated. In other words, the look of your website is completely independent of its functional components. This means that it's easy to add new functionality, like photo galleries, registration forms, e-commerce, or even a Facebook-like social network, without redesigning the whole site or hand coding pages and pages of HTML.

Similarly, the physical look of your site can be modified quite easily. For example, the menu to the right could easily be put on the left side of the page, and the header in the logo area changed, like this.

We can build all sorts of really cool functionality into your site. Give some thought to what you might like, and click "next" to read about some of the more popular components.