It seems that all of my potential clients are now hip to the fact that tools are available to them that make managing their own web sites easier.  I couldn't be happier about this, seeing as my focus is on providing web-related services to non-profits and "greater good" organizations who are striving for cost effectiveness.

I prefer to keep things simple, for my clients and myself, so I provide one primary solution for the DIY web site: Wordpress.

Here are the reasons I use Wordpress for client site building:

• It takes an embarrassingly small amount of time to set up compared to custom code.
• There are thousands of pre-built themes (look and feel) freely available, all installable from the Wordpress backend.  Anyone familiar with basic CSS and HTML is able to customize any of these.
• There are hundreds of incredibly useful plugins available for free.  All of them can be installed in one click from the Wordpress backend.  They add functionality from online forms to event calendars to twitter integration and much more.
• The wysiwyg (What You See Is What You Get) editor is the best I've come across.  It looks similar to Microsoft Word and generates pretty good code.  The trick to using it is to keeping things simple - which has the added bonus of keeping your site looking nice.
• Built-in photo, audio and video tools.  Upload and present your media with ease.  Lots of ease.
• It's all free to use!  Wordpress is an Open Source project, built by the people who use it and distributed for free.
• The support community has probably already answered any questions you may have about it.

Bonus! The hosting company I use performs flawlessly with Wordpress, serving up pages very quickly.

The total costs associated with starting a new Wordpress site are $40-70 (a year) for hosting and one domain name plus my hours.  My hours can total as few as 4 for a basic install with a pre-built theme and a quick tutorial that gets you self-learning the system.  More complex and personalized sites can take as long as 10 to 20 hours, depending on the client's needs.

Yes, there are other tools out there for DIY web site managers.  One example is Drupal, which is superior to Wordpress in terms of multi-user, multi-access, multi-function sites, but due to it's overwhelming complexity (and apparent disregard for being friendly to non-nerds) I only use it for sites that won't work well on Wordpress.

Be sure to check back here often (or create an account and subscribe to email updates on my blog) for more details on why and how I use Wordpress for my non-profit clients (and many of the for-profits too!).