You can always use other peoples templates, there are plenty of good ones out there.

first i take pencil and paper and write all i think about the concept of the site.
then i structure the idea, navigation and content.
then i reseach about the way i want it looks.
and finally i get my hands dirty.

To start your site, first thing to do is figure out is what your site is about, is it about you, flying kites, pets, just to show pictures...you get the idea. Next step is design your layout. Use pencil and paper, draw out how you want it to look. Don't worry about all the little detail as that will bog you down and discourage you.

Next if you don't know HTML or how it works learn it. There are tons of tutorials out there that are great, and tons that suck...I suggest buying a book. Easy to reference that way. Focus on tags, how they work, their properties and proper syntax.

Then start building the HTML...if you have any questions feel free to email me, or contact me through msn I will help you get started.

As far as hosting goes, don't worry about it just yet. You can code and view HTML pages from your computer. Learn how to upload your files when your site is complete. Or until you have enough content worth showing off.

These are some excellent suggestions, thanks guys I got some really nice ideas out of this thread. once I get my hosting I know exactly what im going to do :-P

I probably should make a tutorial on making a Web site. Ok, first things first, you need to know what your Web site will be about. Computers, music, family, or a blog? This involves some deep thinking; so come back when you're done brainstorming. I made a terible mistake of skipping this step, and wound up with a site with no content.

Next, figure out what platform you will use to publish your site, and where you will host it (please choose Trap17). For a content rich site, try Mambo/Joomla and a nice template (which can be found online and for free in many cases). Or if a blog is your decision, I suggest WordPress, a nice and clean (literally; it's XHTML-compliant) bloging tool. If you just want a simple site, sit down with a good HTML book and code it yourself, or get a decent site editor (Dreamveaver, Frontpage, or even the one in the cPanel file manager).

After that, say something! Write at least a few pages of decent content, like an About Me page, an interests page, and a few articles related to the subject of your site.

Here's the part that's a little hard: announce your work of art to the world. This can be accomplished through one of those traffic exchange programs, or just make a link tou the site in your signiture on a forum.

As time goes on, your content will grow stale, and your visitors will get bored. Write an article a week, let's say. And if you want your visitors to be updated on the content, put up an RSS feed or make a newsletter or something like that. I can't really help with that however.

So after youv'e read this long and boring post, I hope that you now have the knowledge on how to open up your own little corner of the internet.

the new site plan was driven by curious thought and hobby at first.i do set up a simple site with some crude webpage.with time going on,i consider the site as a interesting work.so i rework all page and change its life to outside not only appreciated by myself.
if you are an amateur,the best way is to build a forum for your site,because maybe you are not good at PHP/asp to design active page at first.furthermore,forum can attract more webers to visist your site and promote your site pr and ip statistic.
of couse,to stick up for your site is also an aware work to a site administrator.

i just think up of lots of content...then *bam* take out my handy dandy NOTEPAD and start coding.

first search around for hosting providers *cough* trap 17 *cough*
then build your site in frontpage,dreamwever ect make sure that the layout is how you want it.
when its all finished register with a hosting provider (trap 17)
then upload your site
simple!!

After you get hosted, you might want to learn basic html and java. You might also want to download a trail version of dreamweaver or frontpage, that'll make your job so much easier on designing your site. When you make your first site, make sure that you can view it in other pages. Just a suggestion, make your site fluid and smooth, don't clutter everything on one page. Make it easy and fast to load.It takes a long time to learn how to build a site, so if its your first time, then go read some html books cause they really help, you should also learn css and table, they can organize your stuff and your text. I suggest you make your own template so its original and you can control over what goes on in your site. But getting a free template off some other sites may make your life easier and it can also help you learn. If you do anyload any software like frontpage or dreamweaver, any what you see is what you get software, you can load the custom template into the software and edit it there. Also, learn how to use adobe photoshop so you can edit your pictures or templates that you upload to your host. Its also a good idea to get a ftp program like fxp or cute ftp, it'll make your life so much easier. You won't have to manually use the upload button on the host's site. You make also want to list your sites on the search engines, so go to google or yahoo and get google bot or something like that to index your site. also, have an idea what kind of site you want it to be, make sure that you focus on one theme so you won't be jack of all trade master of none (which may be good or bad depending on what you think). The worst thing that can happen to your site is that no one can read the text and words on your site because you use the same background color as the text color. it may sound obvious that you shouldn't do that, but trust me, tons of people do it and i had to actually highlight the text in order to read what they wrote. Also, make sure that if your site contains a lot of picture, make them into thumbnails so they're easier to load and won't take as much bandwith.