How does one get a website?

Step 1. Go to netsol.com or godaddy.com and buy a domain and set up your hosting plan.

Step 2: Figure out Do you know if you want a static website or more of an active one such as a blog?

- static website you can do two things. 1. hire a designer or 2. buy a canned template - go to google and type "website design template" and you will get a ton back. some are free, some you have to pay for.
- Blog - pick youor application - i would recommend wordpress then you need to find a theme you like for it. do a google search for wordpress themes and again find one you like (free or pay)

Get all of it set up and you are good to go... If you need more specific help i would be more then happy to help you out with any questions - just pm me if you have any. You can do it yourself and that way you can maintain if yourself, it really is not that complicated especially if you are going to buy a template.

Lol, I'm not that savvy either, but it took half an hour or so for a basic one ( because the guy who was going to do it eloped to St Lucia with his mistress...)

Anyway

1 - Purchase your domain name. Depending on what you want they can be pretty cheap. Try godaddy or similar

2 - Find a host. Some hosts also will sell you your domain name as part of eh price. Mines a Brit one, but google website hosts and see what you can get for your money. Mines a pretty reasonable £15 a year (I think!).

3 - Website software - your host may or may not provide this. Either way, there are plenty of free website software thingies to download. I used Namus6, which is easy peasy, comes with plenty of themes / styles etc and if I want to update it it takes as long as it takes me to type the changes, plus 30 seconds to upload it. Once you get the hang of it, maybe you can get something more fancy.


ETA: oops cross posted

You should check out bluehost.com or ipowerweb.com. Both have been reliable domain hosts to me in the past.

It's a shame you already have a domain name, because most of the time you get a free domain name when you sign up with a host. Unless your domain name was something that people would lap up in a minute, you should've waited until you got your host and you could have saved yourself some money.

Ah well, once you get your host, you'll have to contact your domain name and give them the name of the servers your host is on (which you should be able to find in your control panel) to associate it with the host.

If you're not very computer savvy, then I suggest you use the website builder within whatever host you get (both ipowerweb and bluehost have that feature within them) or install the wordpress script (both ipowerweb and bluehost have that script set up so that all you have to do is click a few buttons and chose a username and password) so that you don't have to worry too much about the design of your page and you can get more into the nuts and bolts of what you want on it.

If you are wanting to learn how to build from scratch, get yourself a copy of dreamweaver or MS frontpage and get you a good book that'll teach you the basics (although you can find a lot of your questions on the web for free if you know what to google).

Just remember that everything you want to display on your website must be uploaded from your computer to the server that the host is on. For that you would need to get an FTP uploader (I used to use smartFTP--google it).

i would suggest godaddy as the host - they are cheap, they provide a lot of stuff for you to install and use including wordpress and they have great customer service

Wordpress are free, and have good user-friendly templates. They call them “blog sites” but they can be used for a personal webpage. Try http://wordpress.com/

I use godaddy. Bought the domain couple yrs ago and I used their website tonight feature to design it. I don't find it any harder to use than blogger (They're quite similiar, actually.) It's so easy, I'm also changing it and playing with it. I pay 4.99 a month for 5 pgs, they autobill me. And I can add a blog or forum or shopping cart, etc all with one click. I've been really happy, except for their stat stuff. It's suckworthy. But on the whole, I lurve them.