There are dozens of web applications that can practically make your website for you. I'm not talking about website builders that a lot of website hosts come with; I'm talking about standard, freely available systems that can be installed without a whole lot of effort. And a lot of hosts can install some of these automatically.
The most popular blogging software is Wordpress. And for a good reason: Wordpress is stable, has a lot of customization options, and a lot of great content. And although it's mainly for blogging, you can make a regular website with pages and everything with it.
Wordpress isn't quite the best general-purpose system though; Joomla is more suited for a general website. It can help you make a blog as well, although it's a little less suited for that than Wordpress. But like Wordpress, it has a lot of customization options. Joomla is the quickest and easiest route to go if you're making a website, although Drupal is another system which is more powerful but takes more time.
If you've used Wikipedia, you've used a web application called MediaWiki. MediaWiki is great for collaborating with a lot of people on a website and create a user-made website. If you want a lot of people to be able to communicate, you can make a forum with the phpBB application. It's a great system with themes and a lot of customization options.
Some systems are made specifically for sharing photos. They allow you to add photos and descriptions, and are a great way to share pictures with your family and friends, or even your website readers. Two good photo-sharing applications are Gallery and Photo Gallery.

If you want to sell items from your website, there are ecommerce systems that can help a lot: they support pictures and prices, shopping carts, and even payments. Zen Cart and CubeCart are a couple examples.
These are just a few web applications you can consider to make your website well suited for its purpose. You can even mix and match - install a blog in one folder or subdomain, and a photo gallery in another. If your website h ost has a one-click install feature for your chosen systems, you can create a perfect, fully-functional website in less than a few hours.
So when choosing a website hosting services company, make sure the application you want is supported - most hosts support a lot of applications but some don't, so do a bit of research before you buy. It really isn't hard though, as there are usually only a few things that you need to look for, so you can spend more of your time worrying about getting that perfect website.


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