It was August 6, 1991 when the first web page appeared on the world wide web or W.W.W. (maybe you don't know that the idea of ​​the WWW was born at CERN in Geneva!), from there a whole series of protocols and languages ​​for exchanging documents were born. The first websites were "static". Even today you can read this name on some website providers :-); they were called static because they were built with hypertext files in Html and therefore prepared previously and then published so that every time you had to alter a content it had to be done a priori with a software and then upload it to the server !! ... what a time guys!
Confusion often reigns supreme when you approach this world because in fact it is complex and it is easy to get lost among anachromes, different platforms, cms, e-cms, saas and so on. Let's try to clarify first of all on explaining what a CMS is which is currently the best solution for those who want to occupy a place in the network starting from a limited budget !. We leave out proprietary platforms or platforms built with custom-made code because those are usually adopted by large shops and portals that have huge budgets to devote only to their maintenance with dedicated IT departments. A CMS or Content Management System (content management system) as the name implies is a software that allows us to create, edit, publish content on the web. This macro category can be divided into two sub-categories: Saas (Software as a service or software as a service) and Open Source. The first category of Saas includes services offered by platforms such as BigCommerce, Shopyfy and others. In practice, the contents are inside a cloud and the customer pays a monthly subscription fee. They are e-commerce that allow you to sell your products but where it is also possible to create content so they are cms-saas. However, the customer does not have full control of the platform and therefore they are limited for certain types of customers and have a monthly cost. In the second Open Source category, on the other hand, we have software where the customer has full control of the website and its functions. However, the maintenance of the platform depends on the site administrator. Among the most famous are Woocommerce, Magento, Prestashop. The advantage of these platforms lies in the fact of having an open code (open-source) that can be downloaded for free and in practice the customer pays only the time necessary for the configuration of the platform and its customization. They have no monthly cost, it is an investment that is made only once, excluding the costs of any updates, perhaps due to the introduction of new features through the use of modules that are often on sale at low cost in the various marketplaces. These opensource software also need a hosting service on which to host the website whose cost is borne by the customer, but nowadays these costs have been significantly reduced so they have little impact on annual budgets. It must be said that in the case of platforms such as Prestashop, but above all Magento, hosting with certain characteristics is required, otherwise functionality problems may arise. In recent years I have specialized above all on Prestashop because I believe it has the best compromise between simplicity of use on the administrator / customer side and multiplicity of functionalities; that is, it is a software that is ideal for small / medium businesses, even international ones. There are thousands of modules that expand its functions and obviously it is possible to have another degree of customization. Magento requires a higher degree of skill from developers but above all it has high management costs.
E-commerce or electronic commerce is a sector that is growing year after year and that already occupies a slice of 14% of total world sales and forecasts point to 23% in 2023 !. This represents an opportunity for businesses looking for an online presence !!.
On the other hand, for personal sites, business sites, tour operators, real estate agencies or other types of websites other than e - commerce, I mainly use Joomla with an integrated page builder which greatly facilitates the updating of the site even by the customer!