What are the Various Types of Websites?
Originally, websites were purely informational. Before the web was opened to the public, educational and research institutions and goverment agencies were able to make information available to each other via text-only websites. Now that we have the World Wide Web, there are more types of websites than you can shake a stick at. Here we will discuss the basic types, noting that we will not include all and that there are hybrids of all those we will discuss.| Basic Website Types 1. Personal Websites 2. Photo Sharing Websites 3. Writers / Authors Websites 4. Community Building Websites 5. Mobile Device Websites 6. Blogs 7. Informational Websites 8. Online Business Brochure/Catalog 9. Directory Websites 10. E-commerce Websites |
1. Personal Websites
Your Internet Service Provider or Domain Registrar may offer you free server space for you to create your own website that might include some family photos and an online diary. Usually these will have a web address (URL) looking something like this: www.your-isp.com/~your-user-name/.2. Photo Sharing Websites
These types of website are cropping up like fleas on dog. There are web sites like, Flickr.com, Photosite.com, and Google's Picasa. There could easily be over a hundred such sites that offer free photo sharing paid for by their online advertising. Also, many digital cameras and photo printers now come with software enabling mere mortals to create digital photo slide shows and upload them to the web. Most smart phones have apps to accomplish the same ends.3. Writers / Authors Websites
Writer's and Author's websites are part of what's known as the Writer's or Author's Platform in the publishing business. The platform includes, a website, a Facebook presence, blog, Twitter account, and the old fashioned mailing list. Many publishers will ask a prospective client about their platform. In other words, "If we publish your book, what sort of a reader base do you already have that we can count on to buy your new publication?" Fairly weighty request, wouldn't you say? For now, let's concentrate on the website part. A writers website would include a biography, a catalog of published books and works, perhaps excerpts from some works, links to publications on sites like Amazon.com, a link to the writer's blog, reviews and comments on the author's publications. You get the idea, and that is to build a following, a fan base to which future publications can be directly marketed.4. Community Building Websites
Social Websites, Forum Websites, and Sharing Websites.These websites build online communities of people who want to interact with other people socially or meet people who share their interests. The best known website of this type is probably FaceBook.com. There's alsoLinkedin.com, and let's not forget the old MySpace.com just to mention a few.
For sharing and discussing mutual interests, there are online forums for practically any subject you can think of. These Forum websites can be a great source of information and help for the small business person. (I'm sure there is a forum dedicated to your type of business. Just do a web search for something like real estate web forum.) Now you can see this is where we start to get into the idea of "hybrid" sites.
Photo Sharing and other forms of sharing sites might also be considered community building sites, much as Blogging sites are. Can Dating Sites be considered Community Building Sites, or are they E-commerce Sites. All that's up for discussion.
