You have finally decided that you need a website. What do you do now? The internet is an amazing network of useful information. There is not much about web design that you can't find by doing a simple search on your favorite search engine.

There are decisions that need made before you begin with your website. The first decision is: Are you going to design it yourself? If you answered yes, I hope you have at least a little knowledge of HTML. If you do not, then you probably want to seriously consider having a professional design your site. I can tell you from experience, you are going to have to spend a week or two minimum studying HTML before you are prepared enough to create even a simple static website. A static site is student loan consolidation services that doesn't have forms or moving pictures. Static websites do not need a database and do not change. They are always the same until you alter the code manually. Since this article would be over if you decided to have your site done by a professional, For the article's sake, I am going to assume you answered yes and you want to at least design the site yourself. What now?

The second question is going to be: What is the purpose of the website you want to make? Is it a business site or a personal site? If it is a business site, you should surf around on the Internet and see what the websites of other business's like yours look like. You can always take images from other sites easily to use in your own. I recommend either making certain that the images are not copy righted or getting permission before posting an image from another site on your site. It is as simple as right clicking on the image and saving it to your desktop or image folder. This is sometimes a good way to get graphics such as line breaks or bullets for your site. Alternatively, you may prefer to design from scratch.

If you are designing a personal site, you will have a lot of freedom as to how to design your website and what formats to chose. I highly recommend that you make your first site a personal site instead of a business site. That way if your first website does not come out looking very professional as is bound to happen on your first one, you are not jeopardizing your business's reputation.

The next question is how is your website going to get on the internet? You need either a web server or a web host. Unless you are going to need an extremely large and complicated website, otherwise you will most likely be using just a web host. Web servers are best left to the pros. So now you need to determine what your budget is for the project. If you are on a shoestring budget, you may want to opt for one of several free web hosts. Yes you can get totally free web hosting, but the fact of the matter is TANSTAAFL(There ain't no such thing as a free lunch). If you are not paying cash money for your web host to put your website on the internet, then most of them are going to require some sort of advertisements be placed on your website. The best free hosting providers only require you to put text links on your pages, often at the bottom of each page. The worst of the free hosts will automatically insert two extra columns with large ads on the right and left of your web pages. These get really annoying and are not very attractive. They are basically designed to take potential customers away from your site. So if you need a free host, do your research and pick one that only has small not obtrusive ads. A huge drawback of the freebees is that most of them reserve the right to add more ads at any time. Some will attempt to trick you by only displaying a few ads at first and then when your site is fully developed, they add more. The second and more logical choice is to pay for a web host. Paid website hosts are better options. In fact, there are several cheap web hosting that you can choose from. To narrow down the number of choices, you can consider our recommended cheap web hosting at: lowest-price-web-hosting

The next thing you need to consider when choosing what web host to use is: What capabilities do you need your web host to have? Do you need PHP or ASP? Chances are you will need more than one type of server side technology to support your new web site. If you are just making a personal site, You can adapt to what ever is made available, but often, if you are creating a business site, there are certain requirements you need to have for the services you need to offer online. A business site should be designed as a exchange hosting to get business leads, sales leads or to collect information on your target market. Forms are going to be needed on almost every business's website. So what language are you going to use to process your forms? CGI? PHP? ASP? You need to know before you choose a web hosting provider.

Most web hosts will only support one type or another and only a few paid web hosts will support all of the popular scripting languages and server side technologies. But generally you only have a need for your scripting language of choice for most of your websites. If you have more than one site, chances are you will be using the same languages on all of them, so choosing a web host should be a one time affair. Choose wisely though because switching web hosts is not always easy for a newbie. I know from experience that it is an unpleasant situation when you make a site and upload it to a web host's server just to find out that they do not support the scripting language you used.

We have covered what type of website you are making and who is hosting it. What's next? You will need to get a domain name of course. This is a fairly simple process. There are companies by the thousands selling domain names. You want to find a reputable company name such as GoDaddy to purchase from, just be sure to read the small print, Often they will lure you in with an offer for as low as seven dollars for the first year and then charge you $30- $40 for the next years service. What I do when I need a domain is go to GoDaddy where they have an easy to use engine that will tell you if the domain name you want is available. Whether you intend to buy if from GoDaddy or not, you can still use their engine to see if the site name is available.

It is best to get the shortest, easy to remember domain name possible. You have the choice of what extension to use as well. Sometimes if the name you want is not available as your-name then chances are good it may be available under another extension such as .net or .org. Just because it has been so thoroughly branded, I find that names are more effective. Unfortunately, names are mostly used up as well. You are going to have to spend some time searching for a good name for your site. The name is very important if you want a lot of visitors on your site. If they can not remember the website's domain name, they may never return to it. Currently, the best name you are probably going to be able to get as a name is going to be at least five characters long.

It is always best to not make your logo or company letterhead and business cards until after you have purchased a domain name. That way you will not be disappointed to find out that someone is already using your name because there are millions of people buying domain names, so most names you can think up, have been bought already. If you are thinking of making a three or four letter anagram for your company name, you are most likely out of luck. Pretty much all three and four letter combinations have been taken.

It is important to find a domain name that will be easy for people to remember. You may want to use something that can be spoken to someone and remembered. Also it needs to be phonetically feasible or it needs to sound like it is spelled. If you tell someone to go to food for less dot com, they may try foodforless, food4less and food_for_less before getting the right address.

Once you have gotten your domain name and your web host, you are ready to begin designing your site!

Andrew is the owner of lowest-price-web-hostingCheap Web Hosting Review, a website that provide complete and detailed review of affordable shared web hosting reviews. You can visit his website at: lowest-price-web-hostinglowest-price-web-hosting.