There are a lot of reasons you might want to start a website. It is a great way to communicate with friends & family, and it is a great way to meet new people online and create conversations on the internet. Whether you have an idea or belief you want to promote, or a product you would like to sell, a personal or business website can be the solution to your marketing and communication goals. These days, a lack of technical knowledge doesn't have to be a barrier to getting started.

The good news is you don't need a degree in programming to start a new website. You don't even need to know a single line of code for that matter! If you can install software packages through a web-browser interface, you can set up a Content Management System (CMS) that will allow you to design, create, and manage any number of pages, articles, and stories. Some web hosts even have utilities like Fantastico that will automatically install a variety of Content Management Systems from blogs, to forums, to picture galleries or e-commerce websites.

Content Management Systems not only give websites more interactivity and functionality, they also allow people with few technical skills to get up and running with an online presence. The most popular ones like WordPress, Simple Machine Forums, phpBB, and Joomla are all free to use with varying regulations on how you can modify or transfer use of the software. Each of the programs also has discussion communities built around them where new and experienced users share advice & knowledge with the most common errors and user requests. If a problem pops up, there is a good chance that someone has already posted a step-by-step solution to it somewhere on the web.

As easy as it is to create and initially customize a new website, there is also no limit in how far you can take it. As you install easy to use CMS packages, some of the vocabulary will become a little more familiar and you'll naturally find yourself a little more comfortable with the technical aspects of your new hobby. So long as you keep regular back ups, you can confidently learn new skills by trial and error.

Creation of a website is not as simple as it used to be, thanks to Google and its innumerable algorithm changes. Surely, you want to create a website to carve an online presence. You could make the swankiest website, but if it does not receive eyeballs (aka traffic), it is worth little to you.

There are a lot of things to keep in mind before you set out to plan your website design, layout, content and other details. With the power of Google looming large over the Internet world, you could well be doomed if your site does not feature high in Google rankings. While Google rankings may not be your current concern, with the nuances of the website to take care of, it is advantageous to keep it in mind while deciding your site layout, content and coding language. More on that in the next article. Lets deals with simple non-technical stuff first.

While many people build websites to please the search engines, do not ignore your human visitors completely. Remember, they are your primary audience. You need to find the right balance, make your website meet the requirements of both.

Your website should have a specific goal. It could be to create an online presence, provide information, make money, generate leads, or just about anything. Next, you need to chalk out a plan for the development of the website. Be aware of the target audience. The audience could be local, international, young, old, men or women, students, professionals. Once you know the segment of people you want to attract, you will find it easier to decide upon the layout, color scheme, tone of language etc. This is because you will then orient your website design to suit your target audience's tastes.

Design a layout that enables the eye to naturally move from one information segment to another effortlessly taking them to the desired part of the website. This could be a signup form, a set of testimonials, a particular product or simply an advertisement.

Choose a good brandable name. This helps in the long run. Create good original content that provides all the necessary information to the audience. Add appropriate images to add to the appeal and beauty of the page. It is advisable to use a good CMS (Content Management System) so that things are easier in the long run. Adding, modifying and deleting pages are a breeze with a good CMS.

Keep your page light to improve loading time. Choose lighter images over heavier ones. After all, YOU will be paying for the bandwidth.

A great idea is to check out how your competitors have designed their websites. If the research has already been done by someone else, make use of it. Do not reinvent the wheel. Focus on improving upon the wheel design.

This has covered the basics. In the next article, we can talk about important onpage optimization aspects to keep in mind while designing your website. You will need to do this if you are hoping to receive traffic from the Search Engines.

You can either take your time to learn the nuances of website design, onpage optimization and Internet Marketing yourself, or you can hire a website design company, depending on what your time is worth. Either ways, it is highly recommended that you begin preparing for the online competition from day one.

If you are considering building your own website and do not know anything about building or designing websites the fast way to learn is getting involved with a tutorial of some kind. Learn from somebody that already knows how things are done and just follow their examples as you start building your website. There are two way to go, you can find a e-book Dreamweaver course or a Video course where Dreamweaver is explained.

Both ways will work it all up to you to find the best way that will help you get started the fastest, I have included a few mistakes that you want to avoid when building your first website with dreamweaver.

1) Splash pages

Splash pages are the first pages you see when you arrive at a website, normally with a big image or something like this. These pages does not make much sense when building your site as you always have to keep in mind how does navigation works for my visitors and how does search engines like Google see my page. So if you can avoid it do not make a splash page as your index.htm page.

2) Banner advertisements

If you want to make money with your website, then AdSense will make the most sense for your users, banner ads takes up a lot of space and history tells us that people do no click on them. So don't waist your space on banner ads.

3) Clear navigation

Navigation on your website is very important for your customers but even more important for your search engine ranking. By making easy 1-click navigation is a must on all pages. If your customers do not know how to navigate your site people will not see what you want them to see. So forget flash and drop down menus

4) Clear indication of where the user is

When visitors are deeply engrossed in browsing your site, you will want to make sure they know which part of the site they are in at that moment. That way, they will be able to browse relevant information or navigate to any section of the site easily. Don't confuse your visitors because confusion means "abandon ship"!

5) Avoid using audio on your site

People will leave your site if they get loud audio from your site and they have to jump to turn down their speakers so avoid audio on your site.

So use the Dreamweaver tutorial to learn website building and saves alot of money by doing it yourself. Even if you don't know HTML or anything about building your own website you can learn it really fast by using an online tutorial.