I’ve searched the archives, but come up empty-handed on the topic of building a web site.
I don’t want a free site such because of those annoying pop up and banner ads. Paying 10 bucks a month for web hosting is okay. The problem is choosing from the multitude of companies offering it, and deciding whether I should tackle building the site by myself or just pay someone to do it.
I would appreciate any suggestions.
You don’t say what sort of site, so it’s hard to know how to answer. But perhaps the best measure is whether you hope to make money from this project. If you do, you should probably pay someone to create the site for you, lest you make lots of mistakes that could drive off customers (or prevent them from finding your site in the first place). If the site’s just for fun, try it yourself some and see how you like it. Remember: Without the content, the coding doesn’t mean much.
Got the same problem recently. I need to have a website in order to sale a service. I’d like to do it by myself, well, at least try first, before I hire somebody to do it.
So what programm does one use? I got DreamweaverMX. Would that be ok?
Are there any good webhosts around?
If I don’t do it by myself, who do I get to do it? How much does that cost me?
Thanks for your help in advance
Cranky Laowai,
The site will be related to a couple of business projects but I won’t be selling anything through the site. Like Alleycat’s site, it will just inform/ advertise.
Being rather new to the internet (I sent my first e-mail in 2000 
), I can imagine the DIY approach being time-consuming.
A long, long time ago, someone here suggested www.8-95.com as a webhosting service. I have used them with no problems that I know of.
They now have a “free” hosting service – you have to pay US$15/year to register a domain through them, and then you get “free” hosting through them for that year. It is a very limited package, but it might suit a very simple, low-traffic site. If you overrun your limits, you can upgrade to their “non-free” hosting for $18/year (cheapest) on up.
I’m using the scare-quotes around “free” and “non-free” because, obviously, US$15/year for registration is considerably more than the US$8/year retail that GoDaddy charges (and I’m sure it’s lower in bulk, which is probably what 8-95 is doing). Still, it’s not a bad deal, and they have done ok by me. They don’t do support, though – if you have a problem, they have a “user community” board that you can post a note on, and you’ll just have to hope someone else knows how to do whatever it is, and wants to help you out. The people who post there are genuinely friendly and reasonably clueful, but they don’t have all the answers.
BTW, I don’t know if the “free” hosting includes ads or not. I don’t think so, but you’d best read the contract carefully and maybe email them to ask. If they’re going to stick popups on it or anything, you can always go with the US$18/year package (assuming it suits your needs), and register through a cheap place – total of about US$27/year.
As far as building a site, the easiest way to do it is to find one you like which is similar to what you need, and then copy all the HTML. 
For graphics, there are plenty of icons available in the public domain; if you need something special, you’ll have to find an artist to do them for you, of course.
I checked with ICD soft - see link below, $60/yr for all you can eat - and you can get “hairiestmanintaiwan.com”, “drunkenoldkiwi.com”, or “taiwanwookie.com” no problems.
Download Netscape for free and use composer for basic text and picture layout. You can do quite a lot with it if you have time. I’m sure that someone of Almas’ abilities will have no problem producing content, and if all you want to do is lay it out competently then composer is adequate, and it’s as easy to use as MSWord.
Once you get into the more complex stuff, if you have time, you can edit the html directly. All that fancy animated stuff is fine, but remember that not everyone has broadband.
Once you start playing with this stuff be prepared to look up and find that it’s suddenly 4am and you’ve forgotten to have dinner again. You may have thought that Forumosa was a time-sponge, but it gets a lot worse once you start tinkering with websites. Why do you think we never hear from Gus?