Help! How to make a website.

[Tdog]

Let's say a person wants to make a website for a organization and he has average to less computer skills. Where do you start? I've googled the topic and found several sites to create a site and some have free hosting but are they all the same? I know someone on here does this for a living or has knowledge of how to do it. I really don't want to pay someone to do this but would rather mess with it myself. Any advice would be appreciated.

[Fate]

go to Godaddy, they have a very easy system that is almost idiot proof

[twotonevert]

Microsoft Publisher.

[pashnit]

Tony, I used Godaddy to host one of my sites, once you get big, dedicated server space is very $$$, but while you are small, they are great place to:

1) 1st go buy your domain name (cheap)- do that at godaddy.com (or anyone else)
2) then go buy some server space. Pay by the year, small sites are very cheap.
3) Web Creation program - lots to choose from, go to local Office Depot. I use DreamWeaver. Figure about $100.
4) Download a FTP program. I use CuteFTP & another highly secure one. Figure about $30-40. Don't use the server's control panel. They all suck. This is the program to upload your files to the server.
5) Download a webpage template: Just google 'webpage template' and you'll get all sorts of styles to look at. Figure free to $70.

Create the page and upload it to GoDaddy via your FTP program. Then go to Google & Yahoo and start submitting the page(s) to get ranked.

[pashnit]

Once that's all done & the page is live, make sure to create mirror pages on Facebook (I have 3 FB pages), Twitter page, & YouTube page for your videos. Vimeo if you don't like YT.

Then go over to Flikr & use their control panels to create streaming photo vids. Pretty cool & can be integrated into your page.

Things were so simple 15 yrs ago when it was free space at GeoCities.

[Tdog]

Thanks Tim for the step by step. I'm gonna do a little studying and see if it's something I've got the smarts to do.

[lavinrac]

Well I am assuming you are using Windows.. I am also assuming since you have limited computer knowledge you at least know a little about .html files and some windows programs.

First get yourself a good hosting site.. determine how you want to set it up.. I mean do you want to use a control panel (Cpanel, Plesk etc..) do you want to just use a hosting companies programs(generally custom per company). Or do you wanna just use what you have on hand in the server you are using?(IIS for Windows, Apache etc... for Linux). Lotsa options you can take... I personally think IIS in windows is the easiest since you don't have to know Linux and just need to be able to create .html docs drop en in a folder link that folder to the domain in IIS set the IP, register the domain wait the time for it to propagate fully through DNS set your reverse pointers and your off to the races.

This is all of course my opinion and cant code .html to save my life. But I hear .xhtml is better.

[0132VTSaleen883]

A Mac makes it super easy with iWeb. All I needed was a domain name from godaddy.com. I host the site using my mobileme service I already had but godaddy can host it also.