Guides
Guides for Choosing and Running a Website Platform
The decisions around a platform matter as much as the platform itself. These guides cover choosing, costing, moving and maintaining a website, in plain language.
Before you choose
- Guide
How to Choose the Right CMS for Your Business
A step-by-step way to choose, from listing what the site must do to reading the exit rules.
- Guide
Hosted vs Self-Hosted
Renting a finished service or running software yourself, compared on work, cost, control and exit.
- Guide
What a Website Costs to Build on Each Platform
Published US price ranges for design and build work, plus platform running costs, read with care.
- Guide
Ecommerce Fees Explained
Plan fees, platform transaction fees and card processing, with a worked example on $50,000 of sales.
Living with your choice
- Guide
What Each Platform Lets You Export
What each platform's own help pages say you can take with you, and how to keep your options open.
- Guide
Moving Platforms Without Losing Search Traffic
The order of work for a platform move: inventory, URL map, redirects, content export, testing and monitoring.
- Guide
Security and Maintenance Basics
A plain monthly routine for updates, backups, logins and supported versions, on any platform.
- Guide
Accessibility and Your CMS
What the ADA guidance and WCAG 2.2 mean for platform choice, and what to check in any theme or builder.
Which guide to read first
If you are starting from nothing, read how to choose a CMS first. It sets out the questions that matter, in order, and points to the other guides where they go deeper.
If you have a quote from a designer or agency, read what it costs to build a website to see where that quote sits among published price ranges, and ecommerce platform fees if you will sell online.
If you already have a site and want to move it, read the lock-in guide to see what your current platform lets you take, then the migration guide before anything is switched off.
If your site is running and you want to keep it healthy, the security and maintenance guide gives a monthly routine, and the accessibility guide explains what a platform can and cannot do for the people using your site.
How the guides are written
Each guide is written and checked by Andrew Bailey using the platforms' own documentation and pricing pages, official guidance from bodies such as Google Search Central, the U.S. Department of Justice and the W3C, and labeled outside sources where no official figure exists. Every guide lists its sources at the bottom with the date they were read. Where a guide gives an example or a budget, it is labeled as illustrative. The editorial policy explains how corrections are handled.
Questions
Stuck between two platforms?
Send the shortlist and what the site has to do. We answer questions about choosing a CMS by email, and we check any price or fact you report.