Many folks are interested in having a site on the internet - from a simple blog to a full featured private website.  Many Christian parents realize the career possibilities for their homeschooled children and would like them to learn advanced internet skills and eventually build and manage a website, possibly for a family business.  There are many options, in fact so many as to be overwhelming.  Here's what I suggest.  Follow this plan and work at your own pace, depending on your current skills and your goals. You can start for free and later have that full site for very little cost.

Facebook
If you have surfed the web and are comfortable with email, the simplest step to having a "presence" on the web is to signup for a simple, free Facebook account.  Facebook has reached critical mass and at least some of your friends are likely already using it.  You'll have a page where you can add photos, write "notes" similar to diary entries, add a link to a favorite web page you want to share with others, etc.  Facebook may be all you need, but there are limits to what you can put on your page, how you can decorate your page, and so on.  The next step is the "blog"

Need a Website For Your Business? If you need help setting up a basic site for your business and don't have time to learn it on your own, let me know. I can design a basic site featuring your service, shop, or restaurant, register your domain name (such as mybusiness.com), and setup the hosting for you. The cost is $30/month and includes everything - the site design, setup, hosting, and occasional future site changes you may need. Contact me and I will get back to you. All I need to get started are a few details about your business, maybe a few photos (or I can provide those), and an idea of the colors and style you prefer for the site.

Blogging for Free
The "Web-log", or blog, is a collection of daily thoughts, reviews on things you've read, photos, and so on.   In the simplest form, it's like a Facebook page.  There are many sites that offer free blogs to anyone - most are grouped according to common interests.  Some examples are Homeschool Blogger and My Quilt Blog.  A general free system is Blogger or WordPress.  The blogs are more flexible than Facebook as you can install thousands of special applications like calendars and music players, manage links to your friends, allow comments (or disallow) on your pages, even run ads.  You can make the site useful and fun, yet experiment without the limitations of Facebook.  If you have any desire to ever have your own private site, I recommend starting with a free blog at WordPress.

Blogging on Your Private Website
Though the free blogging systems may be powerful enough for most, some want the full freedom of a private website.  All but the most expert computer geek will find a shared web hosting system provides all the power and features you will ever need.  I use BlueHost and recommend it as a robust low cost hosting solution.  In shared hosting, the hosting company has a warehouse full of computers connected to the internet.  You "share" space on one of these computers.  The host company takes care of the computer and the network.  You access your "share" of the computer through your personal computer's web browser.  You will "log-in" to your "share", just as you log in to a private Facebook account or a private wordpress.com blog.  You decide what your domain name will be (www.myname.com) and can even add more domains later.

You can install software, write your own software, and so on and have it run on your "share".  There is virtually no limit to what you can create on the internet with a shared hosting account.  Therefore, it is overwhelming to start here unless you have mastered the basics of the web with simple blogging.  My advice for the first step is to move your free blog from Wordpress.com to your shared host account.  You will need to install the Wordpress blog system on your shared host account.  Wordpress makes this very easy.  If you're already familiar with free blogging on Wordpress, you'll have less to learn to get started with your shared hosting account.

Full Featured Private Website
After using Wordpress on your private site, you'll have enough knowledge to install any type of web software available.  You can go beyond blogging into discussion group software, e-commerce, etc.  I recommend using one of the many free "open-source" web content management systems.  You many find Wordpress, with optional extensions and plug-ins, is sufficient even for ecommerce and complex applications.  I recommend Drupal as a full-featured, no cost content management system.  This site is running on Drupal software on a BlueHost shared hosting account.

The advantage of an "open-source" system is not only the cost (Free!) but that the software code is available and visible.  You can learn everything about internet programming by studying the Drupal software.  You can make your own changes, and even improve the software and contribute it to the Drupal community.  This is a great opportunity for an enterprising son or daughter to learn advanced skills and practice these on a real live website.

In Conclusion, you see how a novice can move from knowing little more than how to search Google and use email, to Facebook, to free blogging, then to blogging and any application on a private website.  Though not everyone needs to have advanced web expertise, the potential is there for anyone interested, regardless of their current skills.