Your first step will be to design the content you want – text, graphics, number of pages, etc. Once you do so, you can use an HTML editor (or a text editor for PHP/MySQL, etc.) to format the content the way you would like. Easy enough, right?
Your next step will be to figure out how you want the page hosted. If you have an aol account, they provide free webspace under an address like members.aol.com\yourscreenname\ and you can post your pages there. If you don’t have aol, other hosts like geocities or tripod might offer free webspace, but understand that they will probably put advertising and/or popups on your site. When you get a free web host, you really get what you pay for. You can register your own domain name (like www.mywebspace.com) for about $15 per year and set up hosting for that domain with a web host using packages that start at about $5 per month. Be aware that the process varies per web host, so read their instructions carefully. Keep in mind that all hosts will support HTML, but if you want to use PHP or MySQL you will want to make sure the package you are buying supports what you want to use. This will usually be clearly listed in the package specs, and usually you will have to get the second package up (as opposed to the cheapest package) to get MySQL support.
Once you have purchased your package, your web host will give instructions on how to upload a page. If you purchased web hosting you will want to find a free FTP program to use to easily transfer files, Core FTP is one freeware/shareware program that is easy to configure and use, but there are many others. The web host will give guidance on how to configure the FTP client and send the pages to their server to be seen by the world.
Database creation – if you are going to be using MySQL for database access, you will need to create and set up the database for use. Your web host will provide instructions on how to create the database on their server, and you can connect to the database and create tables on it using PHP scripts.
