If you want your own web site, there's one question you have to answer before anything else:
How do you get the web site?
Before you can answer that, you have to know what it is you want to do with that web site. The type of site you want to have is going to determine what you need. Furthermore, knowing the answer in advance will keep you from wasting your time and money.
For example, you don't need a shopping cart script for a sales letter site. Blogs require blogging platforms like the Wordpress script. If you want photo gallery site, a gallery script might be helpful. Therefore, don't spend a minute or a cent until you know what you want to do.
Once you've decided, it's time to get that big listing of code and images that makes up a web site. There are any number of ways you can do that.
1.) Make your own from scratch. I've gotten several this way with HTML and CSS, but there are other options if you don't want to start with a blank Notepad file. This isn't such a good option for complex sites either.
2.) Buy a template and then modify it with your specifics, like content and links. They can be simple, bare bones templates if you have web site programming knowledge. Or, you can go to a template sales site like Template Monster and buy a page or full web site that can be modified with a program like Dreamweaver. Remember to stay within the seller's licensing if you use a template.
3.) Buy a program to make your site. Dreamweaver and Frontpage are examples of software designed to make web sites, but they can be expensive. However, they're very useful if you intend to make tons of different sites, because they can help you organize them all as well as make them.
4.) Hire someone to make it for you. This can get expensive, but if you really don't like your other options, you can just have a company or freelancer build you one. If you choose your designer correctly, you'll get a professionally built web site. If you go this route, try and get some examples of their existing work first to see if you like it.
There's no lack of options if you want your own web site. Just make sure you know what you want to do in advance, and pick the approach that works best for you.
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Ryan Ambrose is the author of
Web Hosting and Domain Names 101, a free mini-report series on web hosting basics and domain names.
