So I decided I wanted to build a new Web page. It will ultimately be a community portal for my university community. All I started with was an idea: no Web development experience, no URL, no FTP. Only a basic knowledge of what those things meant.

If you’re in my position, the first thing you’ll need is a site address (URL). I bought mine at GoDaddy.com (it’s cheap). I’ve signed up for a free hosting account through the site to get started. The e-mails they send you will tell you how to do that. The downside: it inserts a large banner ad at the top of your site. I’ll switch over to a pay hosting site later to get rid of that.

To build the site, I will use Drupal. Not sure how to use it yet, but I’ll get there later.

To get the Drupal files on the site, I downloaded the FileZilla client FTP server. It’s free and seems to be working. Your hosting site will tell you the host site (usually starts with ftp://YOURURL).

In theory, when the files load, Drupal will guide me through installation. We’ll see.

I’ll get started documenting my web development experience soon.