If you want to get a website up and running you are going to need three things:
1) A domain name. eg
www.Briperkinsthedaugherofherfather.com
2) A host- a computer that will host your website.
3) Software to build the actual site.
Lets start with number 3 first. For a casual developer, your best bet is to look at a content management system. Drupal, joomla,
wordpress etc. These allow you to create great looking websites that can handle a ton of information, quickly and easily. I use joomla, but by all accounts, wordpress is the way to go.
Now for number 2, the host.
www.wordpress.com has set everything up for you, you just need to sign up, choose a template, and you can be up and running in no time. But unless you pay every month, you are going to have to use their domain name- ie something like
www.wordpress.com/briperkins. Its not as professional, but is a lot easier to set up and is probably the best place to start. Find a few tutorials on youtube, and you should be set.
Once you are confident with the process, you can always then move to the next step of setting it up yourself.
Just for more info, I use
awardspace to host my site, they're cheap and have a great free option.
I use
godaddy to keep my domain- That isn't free, there is a nominal yearly fee.
This is all very good info. However, as Bri is looking for free services right now, I still think the many blog services listed so far are better for her.
Bri, if you
do want to move into getting your own domain and everything, here are a few more things to take note of.
If you want to get your own hosted space and domain, this takes more work. You’ll have to research
reputable hosts and registrars. For domain names, I recommend Namecheap.com, Gandi.net, and Name.com. Hostgator is good too, both as a registrar and a host. Godaddy is not that great, IMO, and a lot of people transferred their domains from it last year after the sopa/pipa fiasco.
Domains have a yearly fee, but you can often pay a cheaper price by paying for multiple years at once. Hosting plans can be paid monthly or annually, again with annual prices being cheaper in the long run.
Now that you know that you know that, here are some options:
1) WordPress is free, but you can pay them a yearly fee to get your own domain. This is by far the easiest route to go. Blogger also has the option for you to get a domain and use their services. For both, you can either buy your domain on your own and edit the DNS so it points to WordPress/blogger, or you can buy it through them.
2) Find a host that has cpanel and has a WordPress/Drupal--or other blog/CMS--setup option. Almost everyone has this. How does this work? Well, you go into your site’s control panel, choose “Wordpress”, and it will install it for you. Keep in mind that you will have to update the software on your own, but this is easy enough (usually).
3) You want to do it all on your own! Congratulations! You have picked the most troublesome path. So you have a host and a domain, but don’t want to install through the control panel method mentioned in #2. What do you do? Download the .zip or .rar or.7z (or whatever format they used to compress it) with the files you need to setup a blog. Now you need to unzip everything, edit a few files here and there, setup your SQL database, upload all your files in the directory you want under the correct CHMOD settings, and voilá! Your very own blog/site is now live on the internet!
For reference, I use method 3 for my personal and private blogs. I use method 1 for my public ones.
I’m still recommending the free services at blogger, livejournal, and WordPress for you though. Keep in mind that some blogging services only let you have full access to the layout code if you
pay up. If you’re comfortable with using a pre-made template, then you won’t worry about it. If you want control over every liittle thing about your blog, this might put you off a service. Please take some time to research the pros and cons of each service so you can pick the best one for you. Alternatively, try them all and then stick with the one you like best