There are literally millions of websites already on the internet covering just about every subject imaginable. You may say "Yes but there is nothing about XXX" but I am sorry to say there probably is! Type your XXX into Google and see what you get because that will be your competition. The chances that you are going to think of something that no else has done already is remote so if you are going to go ahead then you'll have to do it much better than those who have gone before.
You will only beat the competition and get onto the first page of Google, Yahoo, or MSN if your content is MUCH better than theirs. We say 'much better' because life it not simple, the existing sites are older than yours and age counts too, along with many other factors that we will discuss later.
You need to decide why you are going to build a website and then keep these reasons foremost in your mind. This is NOT a painting competition there will be no prizes for the prettiest website. The prizes go to the site with the most visitors, the most page views and if it is relevant to the ones that sell the most products.
If you are going to build a business website then ask the Managing Director and the Marketing Director to leave and call in the Sales Manager, there is no room for ego's here only cold facts. So many useless business websites are obviously built by the marketing department and not by the sales department it does not bear thinking about. Loads of fancy graphics, company logos and tons of other rubbish that the customer could not give a fig about. What the customer wants is, have you got it, how much does it cost, when can I have it and how do I get in touch with you if my order gets messed up. However to satisfy your 'god' suggest they have two websites, one for the company (where the egos can be massaged) and one for the customers (where their wallets can be emptied)
If the site is not a business site then things are slightly different, you can have a mix of information and entertainment so in this case you are allowed some latitude when it comes to design and content.
Anyway once you have chosen your subject there is only one thing that will get you to the top and that is loads of good, unique content. You ignore this at your peril. Do not copy anything from anywhere else on the net because the search engines will pick up plagiarism faster than a school examiner and even if we ignore the legal copyright implications your site will be dropped from the search engine just as fast.
You get what you pay for. You will NEVER have a good site if it is hosted by a free provider because they will never allow you the bandwidth and degree of systems control that a successful site requires.
So if you are serious about your website venture then pay to get a proper host with your own REAL domain name. I say 'real' because you can have a domain name redirection but once again this will not get you into the big time as far as websites are concerned. For a simple community site this need not cost more than £10 per month for basic services but in return you should get a proper domain space, a decent amount of bandwidth, nearly unlimited server space and all the add-ons that you can think of either in the Apache or Microsoft environment.
If your website is for business purposes it may cost you a little more but only to guarantee you get the service you need. An estimate for the hosting of a really large business site would be in the region of £40-50 per month. The idea of putting a business website of any size onto a free host is a joke, you will be going nowhere.
If you are new to websites you will not have heard about 'proxy servers'. These are gateway computers that stand between someone's internal network and the internet. They basically protect the internal network from external hackers and the like, but they also prevent internal users from accessing external websites that they should not. You will find most companies and nearly all universities and most schools use proxy servers and the first thing their IT department does is to ban access to what amounts to all the free sites, as they are the ones with potentially dodgy content, So if your site is hosted from such the chances are that few serious or commercial internet users will be able access it at all.
On another note proxy servers can also be set up with 'parental controls' just like the ones you can have on your home PC. Without PICS labels on your site the proxy servers may also prevent your site from being visited. Follow this link for more information about PICS labels.
Lets first look at what good commercial domain name should look like, a company called "AB Smith & Co" makes "Plastic Widgets" to sell in England, most beginners would go and buy the domain name "absmith.co.uk" and that would be great for use as the email and/or corporate website. However it would be far better to have "plasticwidgets.co.uk" for the sales website. The search engine will rate the site called "plasticwidgets.co.uk" very highly if its content is all about plastic widgets, but no one that does not already know will ever relate "absmith.co.uk" with plastic widgets. Do you want to make sales or are you still massaging ego's?
On the other end of the scale if you are building a small community website about a town called St Ives you would not go far wrong with "stives-town.info" except that we already own that one but you get the idea.
The moral of the story is choose your domain name wisely as it can go a long way to getting you a good search engine listing. You also need to read the notes regarding Geographic Target and Domain Names
Now that you have decided what you site is about and where it is going to be hosted you can start the website design process