So you want to set up your own web site, but don't know where to start. There are many ways to set up a cheap, and sometimes free, web site. Firstly decide what the web site is for, is it just a personal one or is it going to represent your business.

 

Personal Web Site

Unless you have a new idea for a personal web site the chances are you won't earn enough money from it to have a professional build you a web site. There are easy ways to create a free web site or at the very least a low cost web site. You don't really need to know any HTML either. For example, Google have just created Google Pages, although still in Beta it gives Google accounts the chance to build a web site free of charge and without any knowledge of HTML.

 

You may also want to set up a blog. What is a blog? I hear you say. Wikipedia describe blogs as follows:

"A blog (or weblog) is a website in which items are posted and displayed with the newest at the top. Like other media, blogs often focus on a particular subject, such as food, politics, or local news. Some blogs function as online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic."

 

There are hundreds of resources available to host a blog, including:

www.britblog.com/

blogs.msdn.com/

www.blogger.com

 

The list continues just search in your favorite search engine for Blogs.

 

Professional Web Site

Do you want your web site to successfully represent your business. The best option is to get someone to design it for you. There are thousands of companies offering to design a site and to host it for you. Some will just offer you a very cheap site using templates. This means your site will look very similar to hundreds of other sites.

 

The web design and site hosting is provided by http://www.simplefish.co.uk, using their bespoke content management system to create and edit the pages without any knowledge of HTML. The initial design of the web site is created and then plugged into the backend. This means your web site is unique to you. Another good thing is it is cheap to maintain and usually cheaper to build as all the hard work has already been built by http://www.simplefish.co.uk.

Web Site Hosting

How do you choose where to host your web site. You can create an account on a free hosting server. Or for something a bit more professional then let someone else purchase a domain name for you and host the web site.