can you help me setup a website?

hi i want to setup a website. can you help? i need to know what my options are with the following -

• Buying a domain name
• Hosting the site
• Writing the pages, or buying the right software (templates), or should i get someone to do it for me? i know alittle HTML.
• making graphics, or will that come with the template software?
• not as important now, but what's the best way to generate traffic? (getting visitors to the site) i've heard a few times that it is important to use DMOZ. is that true?

i have heard dreamhost is good. it gives you a free domain name when you pay them to host the site. do you know it?

should i try Yahoo/Geocities? i think i heard something not so good about it, i can't remember now


i found Xitex WebContent M1 Start! will it help?

to start with i want to setup a site that has freeware and/or shareware as these are the things i know most about, so this first site will be a practise site. when i have done the site i want to carry on doing more sites, and try to find something which i can make money from

here is the kind of site i want mine to look like -
http://www.freewarearena.com/html/
http://decentdownloads.x-istence.com/
http://www.321download.com/
http://www.klitetools.com/index.ph

are there any other things i need to know? i want the site to be secure, i don't want it to be hackable

i'll be very happy if someone can help me, i know there are alot of questions, but if you have any ideas they will be a great help because right now i don't know where to start.

 

Hi Ice,
I'm in a hurry, but have a look at Mambo (Open Source). It offers all kinds of components, templates and modules for free.
Maybe it's a bit too difficult for you, but it never hurts to have a look at it.
It's what we use at work.

 

thanks, Eldar i'm going to go and have alook. i suppose if it's too difficult i can keep playing around with it till i get it right. or maybe do a bit of learning first. i like learning about computers, so that might help hold my interest with it, i hope

 

I have my personal website hosted through www.doteasy.com.

It is free as long as you have the domain name registered and you get 30 email address free with 200Mb storage and 1Gb transfer every month

Plus, if you decide to go that way, put my domain as the referring source and we both get an additional 100mb storage.

I have hosted 2 sites through doteasy and it is very easy to use.

 

I also forgot to mention that if you have your domain hosted through doteasy, their sister company (www.freesitedesigner.com) allows you to use a web-building interface to set up your site any way you want for free.

 

thanks, Capp i only just saw your replies. i have to go to bed now, i'll have alook at your links tomorrow. thanks for the help

 

When choosing a hosting provider/domain registrar check if php/mysql/apache is available. Alternative is asp support. There are lots of php scripts that enable you to create a website without knowing html.
Asp is a bit like php, but php is open source and most scripts are free. asp is the Microsoft web script language.
Problem with scripts: sites can have a familiar look, but the same goes for frontpage sites.
Alternative to using scripts is using html, but that requires lots af manual crafting.

all kinds of open source content management systems (you can try most scripts from this site)

I'm using e107 for a few websites. Installing such a script is easy: drop all files in your webroot directory (as indicated by your host) en browse to the install.php page. Scrupt is easy expandable and themeable (lots of plugins and themes available).
Alternatives: xoops, mambo, postnuke, phpwebsite...

Good luck

 

thanks too meneer i still haven't had time to go through everything, i'll do it later tonight thanks to all of you, i really appreciate all the help i can get with this 8^)

 

Supposedly if you are going to host freeware programs, you are going to want a reasonable amount of space and bandwidth

 

You can't go wrong with Dreamhost. When you are shopping around I would encourage to look at things like mysql, pph, etc. You can add blogs and other things very easily with them and good hosts provide them as part of the package. Some of these freeby hosts give you one trillion email addresses but make you pay for simple things like a mysql database. Dreamhost is a professional outfit with packages that are very reasonably priced. They are always having outrageous sales and sometimes the better deals require a setup fee. Don't hesitate to write them and ask for it to we waived.

 

Hi every one

here is a CAREWARE html editor very, very, very good and easy to use:

www.arachnophylia.com
​

Greeatings

Loles​

 

Hi Loles,
The link doesn't work.
Here's the correct one: http://www.arachnoid.com/arachnophilia/index.html

 

thanks for all your replies it will be a great help. i'm going to start trying to build the site in the next day or so and i'll come back to this thread for references. still, if anyone has some more advice and ideas i'll be very happy to hear it