[chukur]

How to create our own website on the internet? What are the steps followed?

[N0help4u]

If you don't want anything professional or with the animation you can start one at
Free Web Hosting Services -- 50megs.com it doesn't require html or anything complicated. I think you can get a better one if you upgrade though

[vingogly]

Here are roughly the steps involved in doing a web site:

1. Planning:

You want to have a clear idea of what you want to say, and who you want to reach. Study other websites intended for your target audiences: which ones are most effective? Take notes, and decide what message you want to get across with your website and what functions it will provide its visitors (information, selling products, selling services, etc.). Start gathering the raw data for your content.

2. Setting Up The Infrastructure:

Decide whether you are going to do it yourself, or hire someone to do it. The cheapest way to find someone good and affordable is one of these job posting boards: Guru, Elance, or RentACoder. Look at other posted projects and be sure you understand the ins & outs of the board before you post. Hire someone who has at least five projects under their belt of comparable complexity, and who has been given a decent rating by past employers.

If you decide to do it yourself, the best small business package for Windows in my opinion is Web Easy Professional and the best for Macintosh OS X is RapidWeaver. Both are template-based, inexpensive, easy to use, flexible, powerful, and create professional quality websites.

You'll need to find a web hosting service and register domain names. You can't go wrong in my opinion by choosing a host from this top ten list or this one. There are other top ten lists out there, too. Finding a domain name that's available can be a challenge; you may have to choose a variant of your company name. Be sure to get the .com, net, and .org variants of your domain name. The web hosting service will allow you to select your domain name when you register, and provide instructions for uploading your site.

Both Web Easy Pro and RapidWeaver have built-in software to upload your site to the web host's server; this uses a technique called FTP. I'd recommend also downloading a free FTP client; FileZilla is a great one (you want the client version).

3. Design:

Lay out the structure of your site on paper first, and organize your content accordingly. Remember, you don't have to have your content 100% right up front, and you can write placeholders for pages (like "my bio goes here") and fill them in later. Decide on images for your site, the site's title, and a slogan for the site. There are a number of affordable logo creation packages out there, Logo Creator is just one of them.

You can use your own photos and art, buy stock photos and art, or find free ones to use. Be sure you understand the usage policies of the website, and provide any required credits for the image authors. I like to start by looking for a free image at stock.xchng, and if I can't find free I go for very affordable at BigStockPhoto or iStockPhoto (there are many other sources, of course, but these are ones I've used).

Once you have your stuff together, create your site using your web design software of choice. RapidWeaver has many third party plugins and templates, and a great support forum. I'm not sure about Web Easy Pro, I haven't personally used it. Publish your site with your web design software, and look at it in your favorite browser.

4. Market and Promote:

Now you have to make sure your visitors can find you. Here's another thread with useful information on marketing your site online (Search Engine Optimization, or SEO).

[NatiVe TouCh]

Freewebs.com is a good FREE web hosting site that is strait forward. Used it when I first started doing websites back in the day, looks like the site got a nice face lift over the years. Plus, check with your ISP (Internet Service Provider) and see if they give you any free webspace to host a website with them, most do. If you have a Yahoo or MSN Live account they will also give you free webspace to put up a website... enjoy and have fun and let us know how it went.

[vingogly]

Be sure if you choose a free hosting service that you understand the limitations, and that it will provide the services you need. Some are free only for a certain time, some have seriously limited bandwidth (which will limit the amount of information transferred to users per month), some will not let you specify your own domain name. Whether one of these would work for you depends on what you're trying to do with your site. Free is not always better: TANSTAAFL.

[bugwolf]

vingogly really gave so many good advices. As he mentioned you need to find a good web hosting, in my opinion, if you are a newbie, don't spend too much money for the hosting at beginning, just to look for some reliable hosting with affordable price.