Solid,Foundation,For,Your,Inte DIY A Solid Foundation For Your Internet Business

When starting a new work at home business it is very easy to become consumed by it. We spend so much time trying to get the business up and running that we may end up becoming burned out and lose our motivation. There is so much to learn and Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;mso-style-noshow:yes;mso-style-parent:"";mso-padding-alt:0in

Odds are, if you're reading this, you either have or want tohave your own business. More specifically, your own Internetbusiness. Obviously, I can't possibly know where you are inyour discovery process, but I'll assume you've already reada great deal of information about starting a business; be itonline or off.Assuming I'm right, then you've probably covered some basicsteps, such as narrowing in on a specific target market anddeciding what your unique selling proposition is. Perhaps youwant to turn your hobby into a full time income. Whatever thecase, you'll need to have a number of things in place in orderto do business online. The most obvious is a website.Unfortunately, this is where much of the information you'llsee online starts to get fuzzy. What you typically see arecomments about how easy it is to create a website "so justgo ahead and do it." Often these sites will tell you to gobuy a book on HTML, because "it's so easy to learn, you'llhave your website created in a weekend."To an extent I agree. However, mastering HTML isn't somethingthat can be done in a weekend. More importantly, mastering itat a level that will allow you to create a website that projectsa polished and professional image takes much more time thanmost entrepreneurs have.This might not be the case if all you had to worry about wascreating your web presence. However, as someone who is diligentlyworking to launch (or expand) a small business, you've typicallygot to do everything yourself. What follows is only a partial listof things you'll need to be working on, in no particular order.1. Domain name2. Hosting Service Provider3. Sourcing products or creating your own4. Creating marketing material (Whether digital or printed)5. Researching potential partners6. Creating a newsletter or ezine7. Driving targeted traffic to your website8. Deciding how you'll accept payments online9. Creating a terms of use statement for your site10. Creating a privacy statement for your site11. Setting up one or more autorespondersAnyway, you get the idea.Now, if your "day job" is webmaster for Thingamabobs Inc. thencreating a website for your new enterprise WILL be easy. But,if your "day job" is as the Doorman at Thingamabobs Inc., youprobably don't know your H-T-M-L from your X-M-L from yourA-S-P from your M-O-U-S-E.I can't argue against the value of learning HTML. I've spentyears learning to program in many different languages andscripting technologies. Having this knowledge is what allows meto provide for my family.However, for human beings that don't have a background in theways-of-the-web there's a hugely overlooked resource availableto anyone willing to invest some time and effort.Perhaps you've heard of it.Open Source Software.This is software you can use and it doesn't cost a dime!This is just my opinion, but regardless of how big or smallyour business is, if you aren't looking into open source forways to positively impact your business then you might as wellhave a bull's-eye painted on your forehead. I can almost guaranteethat your competitors are looking into open source software andways to shoot you in the head with it.To help you in your discovery process, I'd like to suggest thatyou visit http://www.opensourcecms.com and check out some ofwhat is available to you in the way of open source software.What you'll see at this specific site are all "web" solutions,which is appropriate since I'm talking about you building yourown website.However, there are tons of open source offerings to be hadthat encompass every business need you'll ever have. All youhave to do is search Google for "open source" and you'll beginto see just how broad the offerings are.Anyway, to get back to the task at hand, I'd like to clarifymy statement above regarding time and effort. Once you've founda solution that interests you, I personally recommend you set itup to run on your own PC first. This way you can learn your wayaround the solution before you spend money on hosting.You'll also have a much higher comfort level once you actuallygo live with your site. However, in order to run these opensource web solutions on your own PC you'll need to setup a fewthings first. I've listed them below.1. Apache (http://www.apache.org)2. PHP (http://www.php.net)3. MySQL (http://www.mysql.com)All three come in versions that will run on a Windows PC andall three are free. Apache is your web server, PHP is thescripting language that allows for all the powerful featuresthat you'll see in the solutions once you visit the sitementioned above, and MySQL is your database software.Even if you have no experience, you can accomplish installingand configuring these applications. However, I can almostguarantee you'll hit some frustrating snags if you've neverbeen exposed to any of this stuff. My advice is to read the"readme" files that come with each of the applications verythoroughly and follow them to the letter.Once you've got the foundation in place, you can start toplay with the different solutions on your own PC and findone that is a good fit for your needs. After all, everyInternet business needs a solid foundation.Unless you've got a huge budget, or you don't need a databasedriven website, then you'll need to start experimenting withopen source if you want to get a big jump start on having apowerful and interactive website that your visitors will love. Article Tags: You'll Need, Open Source