You obviously need a place to put your site so that everyone can view it...sounds simple, and it is. There are many, many hosting services available, and who you use and what you get is up to you, but there are a couple of things to be sure of before you get a host.

As we said in the first part of this article, if you are going to use Joomla you need to have a hosting plan that provides you with at least one domain, one MySQL database, and runs PHP on the server. Again, this is pretty standard stuff. You can get plenty of space and plenty of bandwidth, along with the required programs usually for minimal cost (right now about $5 per month along with a $10 annual fee for your domain name registration). Unless you are building a huge site and need lots of capacity and bandwidth, you really shouldn't pay much more than this...but check them out good and make sure they are reliable.

If you are not going to use a CMS such as Joomla, the requirements are fewer, and there are a billion places on the web to get you started and teach you how to build a site, so we will let you use your search engine of choice to find what you need.

Other Stuff

You will need a program to make, resize, and touch up images...we use GIMP . This is Open Source software, is very powerful, and will do most anything you need to do as far as constructing or altering images. There is a bit of a learning curve...we bought the book on GIMP from Apress.com and it really helped to get us through the basics of the program.

Colors and the way you use them can make the difference between a so-so site and one that really pops. There is a great little tutorial on the use of colors called Color Rules of Thumb that is worth a look before you start.

You will also need an FTP program...our favorite is Filezilla . Basically this is a program to get all your files from your computer to the web server. It's a very easy and intuitive program. 

Another thing you will need to get is a text editor for programmers...we use ConText . It will color code the markup in your files, allow you to open as many files as you want, and has lots of other useful features. Don't let the "programmers" part fool you...dump your NotePad and get a real text editor...there's lots of them out there, and you'll be much happier no matter what you use your computer for.

That, along with your CMS or "Page" software, and you're ready to build your web site!