Free and Easy Ways to Build Your Own Website

While putting up a quick web site the other day, it occurred to me that I've been piecing together web content for nearly 17 years now. It's amazing how far we've come from hand-coding all of our HTML using vi on Unix machines and also just how many avenues are now available for pretty much anyone to quickly go from ideas to real web sites. However, it may not be obvious exactly what technologies are available or what each entails, so here is a quick guide to the best free and easy ways to build your own website. Some you may already be using, and some you may not have even heard of. Eventually, we'll come back and do full tutorials for each of these.

Blogs
If you have a lot to say but don't want to be too bothered with design elements, then blogs are place for you. As you probably know, blogs allow you to quickly get your thoughts down in bytes and share them with the world. Blogs can be used to share information, build a business, or just as a catharsis. You can get free blogs at Wordpress.com, Blogspot.com, and many other provider web sites.

Facebook
Facebook is probably the easiest of all methods for getting your ideas on the web. Just sign up and start typing. Build your friend list, and you'll have a ready audience who can easily interact with you regarding your posts. You can also use Facebook to promote a business, an idea, or a political campaign.

Ebay Stores
Ebay allows sellers to organize their listings into "stores," effectively eliminating the need for a separate web site in many cases. Quite a few people have made good, consistent income from their Ebay stores.

Wikis
Wikis are a great way to organize a project, share information with a group of people, and keep track of commonly used information. Wikis go beyond blogging by allowing multiple users to quickly make changes to web page layout and content, add notes and documents, and add new project members.

Google Sites
Google Sites provide a set of templates that support blogging, wikis, and other web site template types. These sites allow you to easily integrate with other Google products such as their docs, images, and calendars. If you have a domain name (a discussion for a different time) you can also host that through Google Sites. Very cool!

Site Builders on Free Hosting Services
You can get free hosting at a site like Freehostia.com and then use their templates or site-building software to get your site up and running. Though a little more tedious than blogging or wiki, building your site this way gives you a lot of control over the final product.

Domain Parking
If you just want to have your domain name resolve to something other than an error page, but you're not ready to actually build your site, you can just "park" it. GoDaddy is famous for providing this service, wherein they serve up parked sites as a commercial page chocked full of ads for keywords relevant to the domain name. You wouldn't want to leave your site parked forever, but it can get people coming to your domain.

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There are surely other ways to build free and easy web sites, but these are some of the best and will definitely get you started. Figure out what you want from your site, and then jump in. In the case of free web sites, doing is the best way to learn.