Folks wanting to take a footstep on the Internet often want to start with a website. They want to build a basic website and possible build a website from scratch. They want a good website but would especially like to create a free website meaning they want free hosting. Well, nothing is cheaper than free and on the Internet, all things are possible.

If you are on the Internet your ISP has a system for you to create a simple website that you can host for free on the server. For those who don’t know, ISP means Internet Service Provider who provides you with an Internet connection and email services.

I have an email address with my ISP which I never use. I use Yahoo, an excellent free service, or Earthlink, for which I pay a low annual fee.

Just for the heck of it I went to CableOne, my ISP, to see what they offer. I found that I have a spot on their server where I can upload a web page. They even told me how to do it.

Check with your ISP. They may even have a website template you can use. My ISP in AZ did, but CableOne may not. But you can create a free website if you like, not only on your ISP but on many other places on the Internet.

Place “free website and hosting” in your browser search box. You will see that many places allow you to put up a site, giving you a template to create your free website and other options. Some put advertising on your site. Others do not. Take your pick.

Well, you want to build a basic website. I suggest you use a reliable hosting service like Godaddy, but there are plenty of others and some cost less. But if you only have one site, then perhaps Godaddy is a good place to start. They have tools and software to get you going including creating your basic website. Their technicians will help you to upload your webpage files.

It use to be that you needed to know some HTML to build a website. Those days are gone forever. HTML means hypertext markup language. You can forget that. I still use some HTML. I’m an old guy.

I suggest that you use WordPress to setup your site. Go to WordPress’s site to see what is available. However, your hosting company may provide WP templates and modules and add-ons and widgets and plus whatever else you need.

If you are going to list products on your site that you want to sell, I suggest PayPal. They give you the free code for you to allow your visitors to drop things into their shopping cart, checkout and pay you through PayPal.

I use it on my flagpole site and it works fine. The cost are based only on what you sell and they are very reasonable. Plus they take all credit cards, checks, transfers and what have you. Do you want that in franks, pounds or dollars? Also, they protect the customer. My son sells flutes when he is not working on some dog or cat and he uses PayPal too.

There are many sites that will host you and give you e-commerce services. When I say, e-commerce, I mean shopping cart and payment methods. They charge a monthly fee.

I used Bizhosting for sometime when I sold books. It was easy to enter my hundreds of SKUs (Stock Keeping Units) or books and the handing of payment was great. (I closed the site because my vendor was taking my customers away from me with out paying commissions on sales made directly to him after the first sale. No repeat business, in other words. He wasn’t dishonest. He just had no system to handle it.)

You don’t have to build a basic website at Bizhosting. They do it for you. But there are plenty of others who provide the same service.

Coffeecup makes great software for those who like to make their own sites. I use it all the time just to check or create HTML. I no longer use it to build a site because I use WordPress provided by my Internet training service. But Coffeecup has plenty of templates and tools. I like their color selection tool being an amateur artist. I use their direct FTP software to upload to some of my sites, those not created with WordPress.

Once you build a basic website you need to drive traffic to your site. That is the word they use, drive. I prefer entice. You want to create excitement in articles you write on the Internet, while blogging, in emails, on forums, in ads, and on the social networks.

If it is business that you are interested in, and that is why you want to build a basic site, then you need to learn the ropes. I belong to a group of hard-nosed marketers. We help each other. My hosting is provided as are all the site building tools and software I need. After all, it is a business.

Fly Old Glory!