Beginner building web site question

Google is your friend.

Webs.com is free and very easy to use. They have "drag and drop" modules that makes building a fairly decent website look like child's play. Webs also offers many customizable templates.

Good luck!

If you have an ISP that provides web hosting as part of your service they probably have a set of tools that make it pretty easy. If not, any of the big players (Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, etc.) have tools for free. Other big players like Go Daddy will provide help, tools and site hosting for a fee. If you have programming skills you can have a lot of control, but it requires more work. The drag and drop tools make it pretty easy to do some cool things. Which ever way you go, you will need to have your vendor register your domain name (usually about $10) and hook up your domain name to the place your site is hosted (usually less than $150/year - often free for small sites).

path1

Many people are using WordPress to start off (supposedly very intuitive--not for me). You could develop code HTML, JAVA, etc, but for the beginner, this is too detailed.

It really depends on WHAT you want to do with the website (journal, blog, database, selling, etc.).

If you are really looking to "keep the mind sharp", I'd recommend looking at creating apps for iPhone or Android. You can do these with some online sites that help you build (does the underlying code), but allows you to design. If you are going to "sell" apps, then there's a little more to it (Apple Developer).

I would recommend starting with something like a Blog (blogger.com) and look at the HTML code it creates. It also allows you to add HTML code on your site. It's a good start for the beginner and let's you tell a story/journal about your travels.

Hope this helps.

Here are some sites:
websitesetupguide.com/
?www.how-to-build-websites.com/?
www.webdeveloper.com/html/beginners_html.html?

path1 wrote:

If you've built a web site lately where would you recommend a newbie start?

You can build a great looking web site in a few minutes using Wix. No computer or programming skills required.

http://www.wix.com/

Bill

Thanks everybody...

When I goggled "building a website" Results were over whelming.

Reminded me of buying computer for first time. Everybody seemed to say that, the was best was (of course) what they were pushing.

Didn't want to put in a bunch of time in and find out I couldn't move domain name from host or be locked into what they were selling.

path1 wrote:
If you've built a web site lately where would you recommend a newbie start?

I've built one from scratch.

If you want to actually learn how to code in HTML, right-click anywhere on this page (in Chrome it works) and select "View page source."

That'll blow your mind.

I use GoDaddy for hosting. They have all the tools there. Be patient, it's going to take time.

Weebly.com. No hassles, easy to use interface to build a site. If you can use a word processor you can built a site - works exactly the same way. It is free and you get a simple URL. If you want to put your own URL on the site - obtained from anywhere - the site will walk you through attaching the URL - simple and easy.

Don't be overwhelmed. Try weebly. Take it slow and you can come back as much as you want and edit, add, or delete. And it is free. I have used many similar sites including webs and this is the easiest to use and get professional looking results. I just moved my wife's sewing club's site to weebly from webs because webs was suspending the site because they said it had objectionable content. No one is quite sure what is objectionable about needle and thread. Webs claimed it was a glitch on their end but it happened weekly. So that site came down and now they have a nice new site on weebly and it was finished and up in less than a half hour.

If you haven't done so already . . . buy your own domain name. You can do this at GoDaddy.com for about $15. Sometimes they have specials for much less.

When you register it, put yourself as contact person for ALL choices. Then YOU own it and can control it forever. Sometimes when you get your domain name through a company that provides web site hosting, they register themselves as the contact person and then hold your domain name hostage to try to force you to stay with them.

When you own your domain name, you should be able to use it on any web hosting site.

Start by reading:
"How I Learned to Write HTML and still retain a small degree of sanity."

Then download and print "Wilbur."

When you have digested all of that read "The HTML Guru".

One thing that has been forgotten or ignored) is the Eight Second Rule -
"When using a 28.8Kb dial up connection, a page should be downloaded and rendered in under eight seconds."