Creating a website is now an essential activity for any successful business or online venture. A company without a website is quite literally frowned upon as being underdeveloped, or being behind the times. Irrespective of the purpose of the website, there are often times when a company requires a website created in a short period of time. The reasons for wanting to make a website quickly could be, not wanting to delay a launch of a product, or it could be simply to get ahead of a competitor. To keep up with the demand of clients that require fast development of web sites, web development companies have different ways of developing websites quickly; without compromising on the quality of the sites.

Template based sites are the first thing that companies can offer to create websites rapidly, design companies usually have numerous predefined templates created that they can offer to the client, a template is nothing but a combination of colours schemes, and designs. So the client can choose from hundreds, sometimes thousands of predefined templates. Once the clients have chosen the template they want, they can then just give the design company textual matter, and the site is ready in no time. The only downside of template sites is that they do not offer a great degree of flexibility, and are usually fit for people who do not want web programming, as web programming requires a different type of template based site.

To cater to fast web development for dynamic pages, or pages that require web programming, there are specialized software called CMS (content management system) available. Content management systems are way ahead of a template based site, in that they allow far more flexibility and they are designed to cater to dynamic pages, hence a majority of rapidly developed e-commerce sites are developed through content management systems. One of the most popular content management systems is Joomla. The advantage of sites using Joomla or other content management systems is that once the site is ready, more often than not the customer can also directly manage the site, and carry out small changes in content without any additional input from the web developers. The downside of content management systems is that they are usually PHP based, and do not cater to propriety web development technologies like .NET.

Not all clients can be serviced using templates and content management systems, more often than not customers require fast development, but at the same time have specific technology requirements. As mentioned earlier content management systems are based on free to use technologies like PHP; however some companies usually prefer using more advanced and faster web technologies like .NET to get their websites developed, in such cases fast web development requires setting up a team, that will create the website from scratch, and will do so on a deadline. There are very few companies on the internet, that are actually capable of offering web development from the ground up in a short period of time.

Before considering rapid development of web site, a company must first assess its requirements, and should also be aware of the various methods that are employed in fast web development. This ensures that both the company and the web developers are dealing with realistic deadlines.