Creating a website - the best way to start?

[#1]

I've worked in IT for many years and I'm reasonably familiar with how things hang togeter generally although I've not used much 3rd gen stuff, mostly system support and programming in a Pascal derived mainframe language. I would like to "build" a website for a local guitar club I go to and having looked around I must admit to being unsure of the best way to do this.

The Plusnet route doesn't seem to offer much although it is only £1 a moth but you have to do most of the "donkey work" yourself, So, I'm leaning towards something like WIX, WEEBLY or SIMPLESITE, storing heavy data files (video etc) on dropbox and linking to the site. I'd welcome any advice from members that have gone down this road!

[#2]

I am a complete newbie, as far as website building is concerned.... initially (7 years ago )..  I made a photographic site with Microsoft Publisher 98,..  but advice from, I think, Hairybiker, (or OldJim)...  said that it would not be found be SEO`s, because it was hosted as one picture file,...  so I found a program called JALBUM, and made up my "pages" of pics using that, then I used another program, called, Kompozer   (  http://www.kompozer.net/ ) to make the html links and pages work together.

   Another one is...  PAGEBREEZE 5  ........ 

Fortunately, ( and the reason I chose PlusNet for my ISP when my previous isp went bust) Plusnet were offering 250G of free web hosting.  so all I needed was to "register" my "domain name".... this I did with FREEOLA. (who also do web hosting  but it costs ! ).

Once I had registered my domain name, and got it "hosted" with Plusnet ( your host will charge you per year )..  and after making sure that all the links worked, I "uploaded" the website, using an FTP client....  ( many listed on Google for free)... I use FILEZILLA )...

You can see my website ( with over 1100 pics on it  and still not using anything like the 250G allowance) at http://www.nemosphotography.co.uk/

Another alternative, is to start a "Blog" site with Google Blog.... it`s free ! ! ..

https://support.google.com/blogger/answer/1623800?hl=en

. and you can add video into it as you see fit.... so you could update it every day, or week, or whatever, and insert new items about the guitar group, and video`s of their achievements, ... ( you could also open a "Channel" on YOUTUBE, where you could host all your guitar group videos, and , who knows, they may go "viral" ... )..

Hope that helps.

[#3]

thanks very much Shutter, that really was very informative, I'll check my Plusnet account to see how I stand

[#4]

How long have you been with plusnet? It's legacy customers only when I joined in 2011 they had already stopped hosting websites for new customers

[#5]

unfortunately.....not long enough!

[#6]

you could try Wordpress

This is one I created http://www.dorset-ramblers.org.uk/