When asked "How do I make a website?" how do you answer? [closed]

Question

A (non-technical) friend of mine has asked me how to make a website. I get this question all the time. After a few questions I found out that she has an idea that could turn into a commercial site. I described three options to her:

a) Get a book/enroll in a class/follow some online tutorials and learn how to do it. She's pretty smart and her personality seems like a good match for this sort of thing so I'm sure she could learn but she doesn't have a lot of time spare. Maybe if she started with one of those WYSIWYG editors at first? I stressed that this would take a longer than a couple of weekends of playing around.

b) Hire someone to build it. Ranges from ultra cheap to ultra expensive, crappy to good and everything in between. I didn't mention sites like Rentacoder because she hasn't worked on a project like this before and doesn't know what to ask for. At this stage she'd likely ask for a Youtube-MySpace-Google for a few hundred bucks because she doesn't yet understand just how much is involved.

c) Find someone technical and partner up with them. I explained that this can either work really well or be a disaster because she'd have to give up some of her ownership of the idea.

How do you respond in these situations?

Answer 1

Depending on the nature of the required website (ie whether she needs shopping carts etc) I often recommend first creating a blog, although it's often not the best format, it can be used to quite good effect at times. I've seen a number of small retailers for example, using a blog to advertise their wares.