how can i build a professional-looking website myself?
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If you are a true novice and don't want to spend much time learning how to make a site, I would suggest the current super-popular MySpace. You can quickly get your information up for all your friends to see.\n\nIf you are interested in something more, but still fairly simple try GeoCities or Yahoo.\n\nIf you are willing to learn HTML I would suggest ATSPACE.COM. You can create a website for FREE up to 50MBs in size. I have two websites through them and the uptime is great. You'll need an ftp program to upload your stuff. There's a good free one for personal use called "FTP Explorer". Of course you'll either need to learn HTML or use one of the WYSIWYG programs like FrontPage or DreamWeaver to actually design your site. e-mail me if you need some help...\n\nIf you want your own domain and have it hosted, I suggest ReadyHosting. You get 1GB of space unlimted e-mail accounts, FTP access and domain name registration all for $99 a year.\n\nWeb hosting site (FREE):\nhttp://www.atspace.com\nWeb hosting site (COST):\nhttp://www.readyhosting.com\nFTP Explorer site:\nhttp://www.ftpx.com\n\nA couple of my websites:\nPioneer Baseball Website (ReadyHosting - Cost)\nhttp://www.pioneerbaseball.org\nMy Son's Travel Team's Website (ATSpace.com - FREE)\nhttp://tricountytitans.atspace\nFamily Website (ATSpace.com - FREE)\nhttp://tim8w.atspace.com
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Go to www.struif.com and try Site Builder, for a free trial website that you set up and design by yourself - It's fast (10 minutes) and cheap (if you decide to keep it it's only $249 (payable in 2 installments) plus monthly hosting. Very user friendly for nearly any business or personal website. Plus it has the best shopping carts I've seen for ecommerce.
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I'm in agreement with Drew here.\n\nIt's not something you just up and decide to do without any previous knowledge of webdesign.\n\nHowever, let me try to be of some help\n\n1) You need to know a great programming language.  I built my dating site in ASP.NET.  You can use PHP or ASP, it's a matter of personal choice.\n\n2) Find a good hosting site that will allow a lot of bandwidth.  I use jodohost.com\n\n3) Think up a great name for the site and register it as the domain name.  It needs to be something catchy and people will remember.\n\n4) It needs to be designed so that people can use a trial version for like 3 days or something.  This way you can encourage new users.\n\n5) Build multiple plans that people can choose from for payment options.  Everyone has their own budget so tailor to multiple budgets.\n\n6) Keep it simple and not too cluttered with crap.  \n\n7) Great features are chatting, profiles, instant messaging, forums, compatability tests, newsletters, featured profiles, the ability to block messages by user, ability to add video, ability to add sound.\n\n8) Advertise locally first.  My site was tailored towards college students so I made sure that the local colleges were plastered with flyers (not neccessarily ethical, but hey...).\n\n9) Offer perks to new users such as unlimited use for 1 month for free, or free features such as chatting if they sign up by a certain time period.\n\n10) Network with other sites that work with dating.  Create a banner rotation system and offer to work with online coupons, flower sites, hotel sites, etc.  SOmething that will drive traffic to you from other sites.\n\n11) Advertise online everywhere.  Myspace, Bolt, Bolt2, Match.com, etc.\n\n12) Make sure it's safe for people under 18 (if you allow them to use the service).  Parents don't want their 16yr old son looking at nudity.  The more people that can use your site, will use it.  \n\nLook at other top dating sites out there (match.com) and see what they do.  take from their ideas.
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If you want a good graphic designer, you'll have to pay the price. If you want to set a lower price, you will have to accept what you can get for the price.\n\nIf you want a proffessionally designed website, try --\nhttp://mikecox.com/\nor\nhttp://www.finerdesign.com/  \nor\nhttp://www.nrjdesign.com/\n\nIf you'd like to do it yourself, get a copy of "Creating Webpages for Dummies". It is a very informative book and comes with a CD containing several trials of web buiding software.\n\nOr try signing up with Yahoo for your website. They offer a free set of tools for building your site. Yahoo Sitebuilder is quite easy to use.
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First of all start simple, with HTML. Already you consider using JavaScript... be aware that using a ton of so called "cool" snippets will rather make your website look tacky than modern. \n\nI see you also consider using ASP. ASP or PHP are server-side scripting languages (apart from JavaScript, which is client-side). These languages are far more complex than JScript. Perhaps not so difficult to learn but definitely harder to implement (to run ASP script you need ActiveServer support, to run PHP Apache Server support). If you plan to use a data-driven web application you will also need database server support, such as MS SQL / mySQL. As useful and efficient as these scripts may be, I suggest avoiding them this time (since this is a simple school project). If you insist implementing them you will need web hosting which supports your requests (site will not work remotely! If you want it to run so you must install local server support... which is really difficult, trust me!).\n\nMy advice: use HTML + JavaScript. Do not go beyond this.\nUse a simple interface, with a layout table backbone, with background images in each row, insisting on curved shapes and metallic colors (2 or 3 max, avoiding powerful contrasts). Use only discrete JScripts, only to make your page look interesting, but not annoyingly desperate to catch your eye.\n\nGood luck!\n\nSome good web-hosts:\nhttp://www.hostiz.com\nhttp://www.budly.com\nhttp://www.lx.ro
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If its a free site, like bravenet or geocities site, they usually have a user friendly way to set up your site. I've used a program called dreamweaver, which is a nice program to use because it already writes the codes for you, behind the scene, so you can focus more on the appearance in a visual way, which most people need.
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see there are many things involve to have a good dynamic website,  few main points are give below\n\n1- first you outline your business plan and find out what you want to see in your website, \n1- goto designer who will design your site as per your requirement.\n2- then ask developer to create your site, and all the dynamic components in it; again you will be telling him/her how you want to see things in your site, means how your would come up, main categories payment procedures, etc. \n3 - your will have to register a domain for you business \n4- and a hosting plan to physically place your site on Internet\n5 - and finally you will need some technical person to update/maintain your site.\n\nhope this will help you!\n\ncheers\nRizwan Yahya
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I would strongly recommend www.mewebhost.com\n\nI've been using them for 2 years now and they're absolutely fantastic. Uptime guaranteed to 99.9%. They're hosting plans are very valuable and price reasonable. They're great for individual sites as well as for small business websites. As far as creating your own website goes, they even give you a link to download over 300+ PRE-DESIGNED WEB TEMPLATES which are really neat, so that might be of a great help for you.\n\nCheck it out: http://www.mewebhost.com
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1) Determine the objective of your website.here for you its going be on business\n2) Once you decide what you want to make it on decide what all you are going to put up\n3) Once you are sure about what all you are going to put up (eg what pics,what text ..what scripts will you be using and all)..search for a good free web host which supports these features (Features such as a ftp client which will allow you to upload your pics,supports the kind of scripting you want like flash,javascript,cgi etc..)\n\nsome good ones are geocties.com,lycos.com,\nbravenet.com,pages.google.com( you will need a gmail id for google pages )\n\n4) Lot of these free web hosts provide website builders which have predefined templates to allow you create a decent website easily and quickly..if you are satisfied with that..well and good..but if you want some more customization then I suggest you get a free WYSIWYG HTML editor such as NVU ..(if you have microsoft frontpage already well and good..its quite good)..\n\n5) Using the editor you can easily create a website ..learning a bit of HTML to improve the site appearance wont harm anything..\n6) If you really want to spice up your website then i suggest you can implement some javascript ...you can learn it and do it or download the scripts from the net and put it on your site..here are some sites which have a lot of good scripts with various functionalities\n\n1) http://www.javascriptkit.com/\n2) http://www.a1javascripts.com/\n3)http://www.java-scripts.net/\n\n4) http://www.javafile.com/\n\n\nsome good html tutorials for your reference are \n\nhttp://www.davesite.com/webstation/html/\nhttp://www.cmis.brighton.ac.uk/~mas/mas/courses/html/html.html\nhttp://founderweb.com/html_tutorial/\nhttp://www.w3schools.com/html/html_examples.asp\n\nHappy building
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Use a good template which you can easily edit. \n\nNormally all the designing is done on your computer and then uploaded to your server.\n\nTool such as MS Publisher will help you do this with ease. There are lots of other tools such as dream weaver etc.\n\nThere is no admin page as such, only admin mode with only access to you so that you can edit your site.\n\nPlease take some free webdesigning tutorials online.
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I have found one on bravenet if you like, give it a try.\nAdditional tools are available for design and look.\nWith 50 mb hosting space.\nCool Service.\n\nhttp://360.yahoo.com/jcbroogley
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If you're serious about making a website try this product http://www.buildit.sitesell.com/Peter21.html\n\nThis program has all of the best tools to help your site succeed. Everything is included, from the domain name, to the space (which is unlimited) etc. The program also includes a tool which grades each page for you (so you can tell if it'll attract a lot of people) and submits them to search engines. I have no experience yet I've built a site that I'm actaully earning money from. You don't need t know any html. It's great!
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Atomic Imaging does professional web design, and have a great reputation in Chicago.  We've been pretty impressed with the work we've seen from them in the past.  Their website is http://www.atomicimaging.com/\n\nYou could also just purchase a template website and customize it yourself, but that may involve a lot of work, especially if you're not used to doing web design.  Just shop around and take a look at different companies that builds websites.\n\nForeclosureFish\nhttp://www.foreclosurefish.com/
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It is possible. you could try Geocities.com \nnow if you want a professional website you have to pay for domain/space/and lots of other stuff including software ex: dreamweaver/ez-generator/office word.* \n\n*if you don't have any friends that own a webserver and would like to buy a yahoo or goddady domain for you.
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Hire an agency to do it or if you want to do it yourself you'll need software like PhotoShop.  The search engines do not provide that service, but for the most part you'll only need text ads which all of them provide a WYSIWYG tool for creation.
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Hi Smiling_raj_ If you need help with building your own website to promote your brands, here is a great tool you can use. If you can watch a video and click on your mouse your away. Great software at a great price. Checkit out it costs nothing to look
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I used W3Schools also. Their examples are very easy to use. Make sure to view the source code whenever you see a site you like the look of online, and take a look at the CSS file too. You'll learn more just by looking at other sites, and then practice on your own trying to figure out how to get different looks. Of course, if you have any specific questions, you can always ask us here on Yahoo! Answers.