It's hard for people who haven't used a good website platform to comprehend how powerful and easy to use they have become in recent times. We're at the stage where building powerful, world class websites is possible for anyone, regardless of their level of knowledge and experience. In this respect the sheer number of website creation options available online are actually detrimental for would be website designers, because they make it hard to decipher which option is the best.

I'd like to run through a few reasons why using a good open source technology such as Drupal or Site prebuilder (based on Drupal) is arguably the best option for any website requirements, large or small. There are various other ways to create a website that are good in certain areas, but none of them can match the overall benefits of using mature, well established open source platforms.

Free

Free in this context actually means two things. The first, is that the software is literally free - it doesn't cost a cent. The second, is that you are free to change it to suit your needs. This is the antithesis of commercial software, which ties you into using their support since you cannot access the code directly.

Quality

Large open source projects are able to produce excellent quality software precisely because there are a huge number of talented people contributing to the community. People test the software and report bugs to the developers. Developers work in teams and make their work transparent to the community via groups and workshops so that anyone with a bright idea can contribute.

Support

Large projects almost inevitably enjoy a close, active community of people who help each other in forums, by writing documentation and so on. With thousands of people of varying levels of knowledge and skill online, it's a sure bet you can find answers to your problems (either because the problem has already been solved, or because someone is at hand to give you advice).

Flexible

With so many talented developers from a wide range of backgrounds, projects like Drupal get built using the industry's best practices. This means that they are cleanly coded and adaptable. Their modular design makes it easy to snap in new functionality without affecting other parts of the website. Because of this, its possible to completely change a website with only a few clicks, and revert those changes at a moment's notice - almost impossible to do with any other system.

Secure

Again, with such a large community of people constantly using and testing the source code, bugs and vulnerabilities are quickly recognized and fixed. While this doesn't make the websites completely invulnerable, it makes them far better at responding to and overcoming weaknesses.

Control

If you're thinking about building a website, you might want to think carefully about whether you want ultimate control over it, or whether you should give this control to a development firm who could, ostensibly, prevent you from accessing data or other parts of the website. Open source software, by definition cannot do this because you are in charge of the code itself.

Powerful

Based on the most widely utilized Web technologies in the world, with years of design from talented people worldwide, it should come as no surprise that open source platforms are powerful - able to perform well in high traffic, resource intensive situations.

So before you start forking out cash. Think carefully about what you want from your website in terms of what it will demand from you and how you will keep it secure and reliable as time goes by. How will it need to adapt? Surely, having a large team of developers constantly working to upgrade and improve the software at no charge sounds like the best option? It is.

So what's the catch? Well, there is a small catch. Being the master of your own destiny requires a bit of time and effort. You do have to learn how to use the system - or alternatively, pay someone to do this for you. But, we're not talking about learning a programming language - more like the online equivalent of learning how to operate a new gadget. There's lots of shiny buttons to press...