Do you want one page or more than one?
If you only need one page (for example, you're a social worker or a massage therapist who needs a simple web presence), you can get a web page for about $12 a year on
www.GoDaddy.com
. They offer a free one page website if you register your
domain (website name) with them. Register a
domain name with gate.com and you can get a 3-page starter Web site and a professional email account
.
Almost free: Yola
Yola
is an interesting animal. They offer a free website, and claim it's so easy, anyone can do it. But if you really want your OWN website, you need to purchase a domain name from them. Like
www.GoDaddy.com
, it's a good deal. For about $20 a year, you get, not just a free page as with GoDaddy, but a free website.
123TurnKey.com is similar to Yola. Free site. Charges for domain name.
How about a blog?
A blog (short for web log) is like an online journal. Millions of people post their expert opinions, information, thoughts or ideas to the web. Some people use blogs to publish simple newspapers, although the search and archive capabilities are limited. You don't have to know anything about HTML or other web technologies. You can get an ad-free blog completely free at a number of sites. Two good ones are Diaryland, which has a customizable interface, and blogger.com,
owned by Google Both are free and easy to set up.
WordPress is a leader in providing blog software. You will need to find a host like Just Host that offers WordPress as a simple-to-implement option.
WordPress has a number of (not free) add ons, available from WordPress and third parties like Artisteer
, a Wordpress Theme Generator that lets you create your own design for your Wordpress site.
If you want to to share your interests, you can build a subject-based "lens" on Squidoo.
It's sort of like a blog, but also offers you building blocks of your own to add
videos, polls, news headlines, links to other websites and more.
A free store
freewebstore
offers a free basic online store. They make their money selling extra services.
Where to Get It
Free Pages:
www.GoDaddy.com
give you a free starter page if you reserve your URL through them (about $10 a year).
Register a
domain name with gate.com and they give you a 3-page starter Web site and an email account
Webeden will give you up to
15 pages, but you must have advertising on them.
123TurnKey.com offers a free website, with a small yearly charge for your own domain name (eg www.mysite.com)
Yola 
is similar to 123TurnKey. Free site. Charges for domain name.
Online store:
BLOGs:
WordPress
one of the biggest. Basic blog is free.
Diaryland Free. Easy to use. No ads, just a link to their main page.
