I am wanting to build a website but don't know how.

Alright guys, you all seem good at the learn me stuff across the board. I need some help here.

what is a good way to build a website. I don't have funds to hire someone, but I have the concept, the layout idea and the source material. Nothing especially novel just a nice little layout to help people on the net and to put things in a different order

I have bought domains before so I know how to do that, but this is going to be a full on website not a blog forwarder.

There will be a front page with stuff (easy enough, I can get stuff up), but then I want to build a site with a craigslist like search results. Where you have a header and a left bar with links and thing you can reference on your first page. I can find all the code online as it is a mishmash of other sites cobbled together with different content.

So guys, any help or direction or do I just need to watch youtube videos for the next year? Thanks

I would check out square space. Supposed to make putting together a professional site pretty easy.

Look into a preinstalled Wordpress hosting package. That will give you the search & categorization capability you need, I don't know if Squarespace will do that.

I will check out both. I will tell you the core idea is after the home page you would have a craigslist style page where the header and footer and static with buttons that do different things and a scrollable window that takes up the rest.

Google sites. If you have a Google account, you can set a personal website for no cash.

In reply to Type Q:

Might be a good way to set up the prototype before going live

This is gonna be a real live website not the impersonation of one.

In reply to Type Q:

and if you purchase a domain you can import the site service to google at no charge

Bump just because of timing

I guess I'm not sure which part of the equation you need clarification on.

You know about purchasing and registering the domain so you've got that down.

The type of customization you are talking about is probably not going to boil down to using something pre-packaged like wordpress although there are a lot of options there.

You are also describing a site with a database component so what you really need is a hosting service, one which will host your pages and data on their servers. Most services offer this, godaddy etc.

Now you build your site, some hosting services have simplified building tools but you mentioned getting code from other sites so when you are talking code you are talking about either (old school) writing straight up HTML or using one of the web development platforms, I've used frontpage (no longer exists) and dreamweaver (not sure if still exists) there are plenty of flavors of website editors you just need to pick one you can work with.

After that you build and test your site and your editor software should let you upload it to the host or depending on the package you might be building and editing directly on the host.

That's the process in a nutshell.

That's further along that I was before. Thanks!

I am not building a searchable display-able database, Just the overall format. Pay forwarding mostly with an integrate window on the header and left border with tools.

I use IPOWER for hosting and domain name registration. Not the cheapest but they are very good and offer a full feature web page with i think five pages for free. They are also local here in MA.

I use a web page software from Microsoft. Forget what is called at the moment but it lets me make and manage as many full service sites as I want. Well worth the investment if you start dealing with multiple sites.