by Frances Laing

Created on: October 04, 2010   Last Updated: October 05, 2010

Two of the best and most commonly used web site building tools available are Wordpress and Blogger. Both are well-known as blogging sites, but each can also be used to create a static website with interactive and changing elements.

Before you decide which web-site building tools are ultimately the best suited to your purpose though, you need to know what you want. You need to be clear what your personal (and business) goals are - in the short and long term. Wordpress and Blogger are perfectly legitimate tools to use to create sites easily, but depending on what your long term goals are you may find these site-building tools have down sides too.

You do not need to learn HTML to use Blogger or Wordpress. Both of these site-building tools have a user-interface which you can access on two different levels. You can choose to work in what they call "what-you-see-is-what-you-get" mode - (in other words - plain English - WYSIWYG) - or for the more advanced web-site builders perhaps - you can choose to manipulate and change the HTML itself.

For both Wordpress and Blogger how that works in practice is - you sign up and in - and then choose a template for your site from the many attractively designed templates on offer. After that you can publish more or less straight away on either site. The best sites for many reasons because the process is so easy, quick (and free).

However the more sophisticated you want to make your site, the more complex it gets. You can add an endless array of free widgets (pieces of HTML code) to either site-building system  - widgets that show your reader how much traffic you are getting for example. However if you want to add video or podcasts (in the case of Wordpress) - you will need to pay a subscription fee.

As far as the downsides of these site-building tools are concerned - revenue building is one of them. You may be restricted in the amount and type of advertising revenue you secure with these sites. This may be an important revenue source for you in the long term and that's one reason why you should take the time to read the terms and conditions of each site carefully. What you don't want to do is to spend a lot of time creating your site and then discover that you are not permitted to sell items using a Pay Pal link. You really need to check this before you start.

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