Thread: Suggestions on how/what you need to start

Well, it depends on how simple or complicated those 5-8 screens are going to be. If it's just going to be static content, then you can probably get by with using Notepad and IE/Firefox to develop them -- but that would be a really boring web site.

OTOH, if you are going to have some kind of 'dynamic' content, then it's going to require some more sophisticated tools. In this case, you might consider some or all of the following:
* Apache Web Server -- free and runs on windows
* HTML Editor
* MySql -- again free
* PHP for Apache
* You can make Apache serve ASP pages, but it takes some extra work.
And you will probably get into some JavaScript programming here as well.

Now, if you need to develop some server side programming as well, you're getting into .NET land. In this case consider:
* Visual Web Developer -- a free, striped down version of VisualStudio, available from MS
* MS SQL Express 2008 -- again a free version of SQL Server
* If you don't have Vista or Win7 Ultimate, then you probably don't have IIS. I THINK VWD comes with the striped down, developer version of IIS (a standalone IIS that doesn't allow outside connections).
And, yes, you will need to learn either C# or VB.NET in this case.

I see no real need to sign-up for Web Hosting at this point; you CAN do everything on your local machine (I have a complete development environment on my laptop running Windows 7). Once you determine you basic requirements (Perl, PHP, MySql, MSSql ASP, ASP.NET, etc.) then you can shop for a web host that provides you with the features you need. Most web hosts run a flavor of Unix and thus support only PHP, MySql, etc. -- a windows hosting environment will cost more.

I would suggest that you start with all the Free software you can (Apache, MySQL, etc) and get a good editor to work with -- you can add more toys as your development requirements mature.

I have a friend with no real web design/development experience who runs a business creating a presence on the web for clients. There is nothing exciting about it, but he makes decent money handling this for them.

He uses basic tools, something like FrontPage (or its replacement, Expression). He also handles all of their hosting requirements. Basically, when he gets a new client, he adds a new plan to his own account and they are responsible for the payments. All of his sites are very basic, static, pages. It definitely won't get you clients that are a decent size company, but you can definitely get some business from local companies or home-based small businesses.

Wolffy provided you a plethora of options, which I agree with. To add to that list, a good (free) graphics editing software is GIMP.

Add to my list a copy of FireFox with the FireBug add-on. IMHO, FireBug is way better than any IE tool for debugging web pages. IE8 isn't too bad, and I'm just now looking at Chrome 4.

Yes, you can start with just notepad, ftp and a free web host. It's just that you would need to FTP your pages to the host to view them as a web server would server them up. I opted for the Apache option so as to not require an internet connection all the time.

Heck your ISP may offer a small about of web space for personal web sites (such as Comcast), so I'd go ahead and use that. (The down side is that your work is pretty much on display for whomever stumbles across it).

And get a copy of Filezilla rather than use command line mode of FTP