What's the best way to make a free website?

[Charley]

I'm looking into setting up a website for a debate society that a friend and I are going to start at university. Problem is, I know fuck all about how to set up a website or where to get the hosting from.

I thought about getting a random free-host then getting a free .co.nr domain to redirect to it, but .co.nr say that any websites with .co.nr mustn't be mentioned in mass emails, which we are planning on doing.

Any tips/advice? (Or a web programmer that's bored and wants to make us a website ?)

[XGamer]

Try http://www.webs.com/
It's useful you can get good host there too

[stormeus]

Webs.com is shit. Not the shit, just shit.

You might want to get a professional host (preferably one running cPanel like this one or this one) and use the auto-installer scripts to put something like SMF or Joomla up. Mass-emails won't work well on most web hosts, as most of their Terms of Service agreements ban them.

You could also use a forum host like SMFNew, but the customization opportunities are limited.

There's also option #3, which is let a bored web programmer like me do it.

[morphine]

Yeah stormeus is going to cook you a kingdom of a site.

[(PaK)DeViL_JiN]

i dont remember the name but i think it was http://www.000webhost.com/
u can also check this hope it help u.

[Charley]

Haha well that would be ace.

Perhaps I didn't make myself clear on the mass email thing. We are not concerned with sending mass emails from the actual website (We had a problem with that before, anyone remember? :p). We will be sending emails to perhaps around 100/200 people from a yahoo and hotmail account, but:

It is absolutely forbidden to MENTION any free .co.nr web address in any mass-emails (news-letters, mailing-lists, membership emails, etc.).

We'd ideally want a free host as the funds for this project initially are going to be low. The future budget depends on how many people join, but we are only charging a £1 membership fee, so even if 100 people joined it probably wouldn't be enough to keep up a website for a year as well as our other expenses.

Perhaps if the budget allowed we could siphon off some funds to you Stormeus, as payment for building a website.

[XGamer]

There's also option #3, which is let a bored web programmer like me do it.

I smell money mmmmm... 

[Thijn]

Wonder why, But you need a proper host with good email support. orrr, get a free host with proper PHP support (most of them do) and use SMTP together with an gmail account to send the "spam".

Think you can use a co.cc domain for that too.

Lemme know if ya need help


EDIT: Not sure if I understood the email stuff, Are you manually sending the emails and linking to a site where you can pay for something? If so, No need to get a real good one. You can use co.cc together with DNS to get a ace site

[Charley]

EDIT: Not sure if I understood the email stuff, Are you manually sending the emails and linking to a site where you can pay for something? If so, No need to get a real good one. You can use co.cc together with DNS to get a ace site

There is no payment involved, we will be manually emailing to a website about our society and perhaps with a forum on it.

Here's the thing, I don't know PHP or how to design a web page, so I was wondering whether there's somewhere where I could make a website easily and a domain like .co.cc to use to cover up the ugly domain name that we'd get from that.

Either that or someone who's willing to make us a simple website, using a template or whatever that we could put onto a free host.

[kyber7]

EDIT: Not sure if I understood the email stuff, Are you manually sending the emails and linking to a site where you can pay for something? If so, No need to get a real good one. You can use co.cc together with DNS to get a ace site

There is no payment involved, we will be manually emailing to a website about our society and perhaps with a forum on it.

Here's the thing, I don't know PHP or how to design a web page, so I was wondering whether there's somewhere where I could make a website easily and a domain like .co.cc to use to cover up the ugly domain name that we'd get from that.

Either that or someone who's willing to make us a simple website, using a template or whatever that we could put onto a free host.

Maybe you can search on YouTube for a tut on how to create a website?
I used to watch one, there was a program called Adobe Dreamwaver or smth. Give it a try!