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big mess.

Another possibility here is to use a prebuilt template and edit it to suit your needs. In this case, somebody else has written most of the code for you and you can add your content into their code. This may be a suitable option for beginners as it gives you a chance to work with the code yourself, but you don't have to be put off by having to build the entire site from scratch. The downside however is that there is often no guarantee that the code in the template is well written, unless you know enough about it to see for yourself.

If you do write your own code using any of the above methods, you have to find somewhere to host your site. It is possible to set up a host from your own computer but this requires in depth knowledge of web servers, security issues and so on, and also requires that your computer is turned on constantly. If your internet service fails or your computer turns off, your site vanishes. You can pay for a hosting company which is the most popular option and gives you almost the same freedom as hosting from your own computer but with security and stability built in. In both cases, you need to buy a domain name for your site, eg mysite.com. The third option is to find a free host, which may or may not allow you to have your own domain name, may provide a domain name for example mysite.freehost.com or freehost.com/mysite. This is less credible for serious websites but would be great for a beginner who just wants to play with writing code. Free hosts may also put adverts on your site or limit how many times it can be viewed. This all needs to be taken into consideration.

If you don't like the sound of writing your own code, there are several different types of programs available to write code for you. Some are web based such as google page creator, some are programs you install on your computer such as Dreamweaver and frontpage, and some are part of the actual website, for example wordpress and joomla. There are also several other types that exist. They are know by various names depending on how they work, such as WYSIWYG editors, content management systems, site builders, page creators, html generators and so on. They all function differently, but what they have in common is that you input information about how you want your site to look and what information you want it to display, and they write the code for you.

The amount of control you have over your website varies among the different tools and programs, and so does the ease of

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