Once you get the domain and decided where you going to host, Its time to get your hands dirty with all the softwares you want to install for your website. It could be as simple as WordPress or a combination of softwares like a CMS+Photogallery.

Most of the hosting companies have either Fantastico or their own 1click software packages which makes life super simple for novice users to install bunch of software’s at a click on a button. Incase you don’t have that option with your hosting company and want to install open source software just download it from the respective site, upload it to your server and install (mite not be as easy at times )

A quick low down on all free opensource software available on the net to get kickstarted with your website. [All these softwares will work on a Linux Server]

Content Management System

When you have a lot of content+need for polls+forums+photo galleries all in one you go for a CMS.

Mambo
Drupal
Joomla

Blogs

When you want to express your thoughts as simple posts. But the blogging engines have become very powerful and have lot of features which a CMS has like polls+photo galleries+events+…

WordPress
b2evolution

Photo Galleries

If you need to show case your portfolio or just want to upload your wedding album on your own domain… Yes there are free services like flickr+picassa available where you can upload. But having your own Photo Gallery installed will give you more freedom to customise it what you want.

Gallery
4images
Coppermine

Ad Server

If you have a website which is popular enough for people to come to you to display their banners you would need an Ad server which will take care of serving the Ad + track the number of clicks/views, allow you to schedule the ads and many other things…

OpenX

Forums

Forums are open discussion boards where related topics are categorised. People can engage in discussion by posting messages on relevant topics and replying to messages already posted.

Phpbb
SMF

Digg Clones

They are content management systems in a unique way that encourages users to participate and control the content on the site.

Pligg

Social Network

So you want to start your own orkut or facebook you can do so in a couple of hours using one of the freely available software…

PHP Izabi

Shopping Cart

If you have some goods to sell and need a quick online shopping cart. Most of the shopping cart come with ready to use modules which are plugged in to some of the popular Payment Gateways (Paypal)

Zen Cart
OsCommerce

FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions… Simple management tool to maintain FAQ’s for a particular website

FAQMasterFlex

Polls and Surveys

Usefull when you need to conduct surveys/polls.

Advanced Poll
phpESP
PHPSurveyor

Mailing List

If you want to send the same mail to 100000 of people at the same time and on a regular basis, use a mailing list program where you can templatise your mail and have a single repository for emails

PHPlist

Guestbook

No one really uses them any more… I am wondering why i have it here

ViPER

Wiki

A wiki is a type of website that allows the visitors to add, remove, and sometimes edit the available content

PhpWiki
Tiki Wiki

Project Management

Now if you have a team working on a project and you want to keep a tab on whose doing what and how much time its taking go for one of the PM tools… There are some online services also available which do the same task…

PHProjekt
dotProject

Other Scripts

Moodle

• Moodle is a course management system designed to help educators create quality online courses

Noah’s Classifieds

• Run your own Classified ads website!

PHPauction

• Host your own auctions site!

You have Google Analytics, SiteMeter to monitor your traffic. They will tell you how many people visited the website, from where, how much time they spent and so on.

You can use Google Adsense, AdBrite which will provide you with banners which can earn you some revenue.

Each of the software mentioned above have an Admin interface to control the content flowing to the website. Also some of these software’s have tons of plugins most of them are free and can add a lot of value to the host software.

As you can see there is a hell lot one can do using these free Open Source Softwares…

If there is some Open Source Software you are using and think it will be useful to be listed here do comment about it or drop me a line.

Cheers!

• Domain Name

  Do you know what you want your website to be called? Figure it out first and then check if that name is present or not. Most of the domains are gone so it mite take a while before you finalize the domain name you want.Go for a .COM domain if not then a .IN but choice is your there are lot of exotic domain extensions available like .ME, .Asia, .CH and so on for every country in this world.

  It would cost any where between 10USD for a .COM to 15USD for a .IN to 100+USD for the exotic domain extensions.

  You can register your domains at  one of the million websites offering you the service but i prefer indialinks or godaddy or yahoo domains.

  To know about all the top level extensions available Click here or here

• Hosting

  Once you register a domain name comes the task of giving it a home or host it on one of the millions of websites which offer these services. Again every hosting company will also allow you to buy your domain and most of the times for FREE if you host it with them.

  You have two types of hosting Windows Server and Linux Server. You will have to go for Linux which is cheap (since linux servers have all open source software where as Windows servers need all licensed software)

  Hosting can cost you from 6USD/Month to NNNUSD/Month. Every hosting company has a return money back policy if you are not satisfied.

Once  you are done with buying your Domain name and hosting it you are good to go!

One piece of advice host your mail@domain with Google. Its free, gives you 6GB space, its fantastic and has the same GMail interface. [Click here]

Some companies which offer the above services

• Indialinks
• GoDaddy
• MediaTemple

Have i missed anything here? If you are using any hosting service and happy with it Please comment about it along with the link. Thanks

Click here for all the free Open Source Software for your website.

Cheers!