I can has a Website?

I'm taking a bus trip this summer and I want to build a website for it. I don't have a whole lot of experience with site building and right now I'm sort of just stuck with how to start. I have some html experience and I'm a fairly intelligent person. I've done some searching for a web host, but all the sites that come up in google look like scams, and even though I'm fairly certain they aren't, if the host can't make a reputable looking site I'd rather not do business with them.

Basically I'm just looking for advise on how to get off the ground and start building a site that will start off pretty basic but will have the potential to grow. I want to use it to document the trip, but I'd also like it to include an art portfolio, a personal 'blog' space to dump my ideas and a portal for social awareness issues. I'd also like to use it as an oportunity to learn more about web design. Can anyone point me in the right direction, maybe suggest a good web host that doesn't cost too much and is reliable, as well as anything else that you think might be important? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!:D

Well, as far as web hosts go I won't be able to point you in the direction of any english speaking hosts, as all I currently know of good reputational hosts are all danish :P

As far as your website goes it seems like all the tasks you require will require a dynamic website (for stuff like updating your trip as you move along, and adding new pictures to your art portfolio, same goes for the blog). That also means that HTML alone won't exactly be enough. Obviously you could make it all in HTML, but that also means that you'd have to upload and update pages each time you want new content... which is a terrible solution. Especially when you're on the road ;) (if you're thinking about updating the trip as you go along that is) Also this approach will deffinately NOT give your website potential to grow.

The most of the services you describe can simply be aquired from external sources and simply linked to your website, but that's generally a bad idea as you'd have links to different things flying all over the place, making the user leave your actual website too much :P

Starting from the basics you'd want to use a database management system. If anything, I can recommend that you use MySQL. There's other choices out there, but MySQL is a popular choice. Systems like MS SQL Server are rather restricted in terms of licenses, and MySQL have certain SQL commands that makes things a bit easier.

http://www.mysql.com/ - MySQL

It'll require that you have some knowledge with SQL to make the required queries... but it's an extremely simple language.

You'll also need an interface program to edit your database, like HeidiSQL:
http://www.heidisql.com/

As far as programming for the actual pages go... I've only ever used the .NET framework, more specifically ASP.NET coupled with C#. Since it's .NET though you can choose between any .NET supported language to do the coding, like VB.NET and so on.

You also have other choices like PHP, but I've never looked into that.

I'd say that's about the most essential things you'd need to make a dynamic website with a potential to grow. There's lots of tasks inbetween like making a minor CMS system and so forth.

... alright, so I'm not quite sure if I exceeded the kind of functionality you were going for :P But if you really do want the kind of functionality you're describing, it would be the way to go.

At any rate though, there's a couple of things to get you going atleast ;)

Do you really think I'll need all that? What exactly would SQL allow me to do that I wouldn't be able to otherwise? I don't know much about it, is it just a database? I can't think of anything I would want to do right off the bat that would need to be databased.

@SomeDreamer, I think that's a bit overkill for someone not as tech savvy, especially for a small personal website.

I'd recommend Webs.com to start out with. They have a user-friendly interface to create websites. No need to learn coding for this, it's a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get).

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Do you really think I'll need all that? What exactly would SQL allow me to do that I wouldn't be able to otherwise? I don't know much about it, is it just a database? I can't think of anything I would want to do right off the bat that would need to be databased.

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Well in case of anything where you'd like to make entries to the website like blog posts and so on, or update pages directly from some sort of CMS and so on, text and so forth would normally be stored in a database and retrieved through SQL queries.

There is something like webs.com (like above poster mentions). I don't exactly know how much they support in terms of features for what you want, might do the trick though. WYSIWYG might be a good place to start off in that case ^^

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SomeDreamer, I think that's a bit overkill for someone not as tech savvy, especially for a small personal website

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Yeah I thought it might be :D But even though it's a smaller personal website some of the functionalities would most likely need to be build up around a database.

Keep it simple. You can find a ton of free website templates online. HTML, Flash, etc.