Software you must know about
- Software packages again: WordPress for individualistic pursuits, Drupal for community systems, and for multiple product online stores, Zen Cart or OsCommerce or perhaps a cart plugin or module made for Drupal or WordPress. Some web hosts will even install these pacakges for you.
- Free stuff. The best things in life are free and so are the best things on the web. While that most often means free as in beer, it is especially free as in speech. Commonly, websites run on a stack of software, and we are usually talking about the LAMP stack, for ‘Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP, although the P can refer to Python or Perl also. No matter. If you are faced with the prospect of paying for a software package to run a website, seek the advice of other software developers. If you dont know anybody, go email people who advertise on Craigslist. In most cases, there is software that is free to get, free to use, free to modify, and free to share with whoever you please at no cost. Why is the majority of the Web running on free software? Complex software was able to be developed through a community that supports openness and discussion. For this to happen, it had to be free in the ways just described.
- Make extensive use of third party web applications and sites. Accounts with Delicious, Flickr, and YouTube can be had and integrated with your website with a Yahoo! and Gmail email account. There is also Twitter, FeedBurner, Vimeo and FaceBook. All this is free.
If you are faced with the prospect of paying for a software package to run a website, seek the advice of other software developers.
