A wonderful technique to reduce website development cost

Websites - Good way to get online presence
Websites are very vital to get online presence of any business nowadays. Websites are categorized into two different types. First one is Static Website and second one is Dynamic Website, normally known as web applications.

Static websites are most widely used for any business since they help to bring up the online presence more easily and quickly. Depending on the content and features, static websites cost around $300-$700. It includes web design and development. Apart from that, the business has to spend for hosting space and domain name for the website.

Cloud based development is now more prevalent. Building a website and running it will be very easy and cheap using these cloud infrastructure. But the difficulty facing the development of static websites still looms high as it does not matter who provides the infrastructure. The development cost is still same.

Technology - LAMP
Static websites are developed using HTML and PHP mostly. The software companies use LAMP(Linux, Apache, MySQL, Php) architecture for static websites. It is this apache server that matters most since it helps to provide backend services for the static websites. For example, contact us page in static website requires Apache-like Server to listen for any request submission. So the companies charge hefty cost to website development with Apache server. So how do we reduce the development cost of static website? Here is quick way that Makinus has done and is recommending.

HTMLService - B2OPlus
HTMLService is an open source project developed by B2OPlus. The project aims to provide independent services for static websites. The services include but not limited to contact us form submission, subscribe page request. Makinus decided to use this project to handle the two-part-development of static websites. Basically the static website development can be split into two parts.

1. Static HTML page design
2. Backend Services like contact form submission, subscription request, career page services etc.

Since HTMLService offers the services for the second part of the static website development, Makinus has forked from B2OPlus HTMLService and customized it to avail its own services for its own website. So the key part of reducing the website development cost is this.

"Use HTMLService for your backend services"
               

That saves you from being dependent on LAMP stack and hence you don't pay hefty cost to website development companies. "Ok. I get it, but how do I run HTMLService as it definetly needs the same hosting and server cost?"

Heroku - IAAS provider

To your question, Makinus recommends to go for free cloud based IAAS providers like Heroku or Openshift. Since Heroku is still free and more easy to deploy your apps, it recommends to use Heroku infrastructure. Makinus has developed its backend services by customizing HTMLService project and hosted in Heroku. That's it. We have saved few dollars.

"But wait, what about the first part of the website development, that is, Static HTML page design? Don't we need to pay for that? No, you don't have to if you wish."

Free HTML Template Design
Makinus suggests to go for free HTML templates or free Bootstrap Template for your business website. There are tons of them available freely on the internet. So you don't spend for the HTML page design too. "Well, there is one final piece of this wonderful idea. What about the hosting space? You definitely need to host your static html pages, right?".

To solve that equation, we have a solution. "Github".

Host Websites on Github
Github, a famous web development and internet hosting provider company offers free hosting space using their Git based code repository. So you can host your html pages in Github and your hosting is free forever. If html pages are boring you can try Jeykll based websites that is supported by Github by default. So on the conclusion, you can use Github to host your html pages or Jeykll websites. To design html pages, you can get free HTML template from internet. You can customize HTMLService and host it in Heroku for free. That way you could save few dollars while developing a new website.


If you like this idea and you still don't know how to do this, Makinus offers to build your website using this idea for a "one-time service fee".