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Content Management Made Easy
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You can spend a career honing and perfecting your website with an html editor such as Microsoft's Expression Web or Dreamweaver. However, because time is money, the affiliate marketer needs to spend time promoting, not developing. The solution to this may be a good content management system. Three very good and free products to consider are Worpress, Joomla, and Drupal.
Wordpress
Wordpress can be used for content, e-commerce, or as a blog which is its primary focus. Many available add-ons make it a versatile tool for the affiliate marketer. If you are on a tight budget, you can host it free at wordpress.com but you will not be able to use many of the additional features available on a self-hosted site. Wordpress can to compared to Blogger, Google's free blog, but Wordpress is much more powerful and flexible. Many affiliate marketers will want to use Wordpress in addition to the other content mangement systems. For example, you can use Joomla for you main site and add Wordpress as a complimentary blogsite. More content means more traffic!
Joomla Has it All
Without delving into too much into its history, Joomla is a re-release of Mambo, a very popular content management system. Joomla currently has two versions, 1.0 and 1.5 which are not completely compatible. Which to choose depends on the affiliate marketer's primary focus. Version 1.0 is the more mature version and consequently, there are more add-ons and modules available to extend and complement the capabilities of the basic system which is quite robust by its self. Version 1.5 is newer and seems to have an easier to use and understand management system. If you need a full-featured e-commerce site, Version 1.0 would be the better choice at the present because the add-on module Virtue-Mart is not yet compatible with Version 1.5.
You can customize the look of your site with the many free templates available for Joomla. However, you probably will need to modify any template for you own use--logos and slogans for example. So, you will need to understand at least some html and css in order to use it. You could design your own template with the available tutorial, but that would probably take a lot of time away from promotion which is key to an affiliate marketer's success. So unless you plan on developing templates to sell, which many do, you are probably well advised to find a ready made one that you can modify to your personal taste.
Drupal
Drupal is also a free content management system that can be used as a blog, e-commerce, or content site. The learning curve is not so steep so you can get you site operational in a hurry. There are many free and paid additions that make Drupal a full-featured solution to website development and maintenance. I consider Drupal to be a viable option for use by affiliate marketers.
Choosing a Web Host
Choose a web host that supports MySQL and PHP. These are necessary for many content management system including those discussed in this article. Also be sure to find one that has cpanel with fantastico. You can painlessly install Wordpress, Joomla, and Drupal with fantastico. Many web hosts will let you have many domains and sub-domains without any additional fees. Get one of those! You will probably need several sites to be a successful affiliate marketer. Versatile hosting and free content management software is, in my opinion, the way to go!
About the Author
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