Looking to build a website, for friends to blog and post pics and video. Dont know how to start, please help.?

webs.com would be the best ''build your own website'' site.

All the hosting companys I know allow you to update/change/upload new webpages at anytime. There are turn-key websites out there to do what you want. Cost a couple of hundred US dollars I think. You can customize them after you get them. Search Yahoo for some ideas.

I'd first look at the CMSs demoed at http://www.opensourcecms.com/ If there's something there that you can use, your work is almost done. Most of them are pretty easy to install and set up. I wouldn't bother with Dreameweaver (I create sites for a living, and I haven't touched DW in years) - just get a good sybtax-highlighting editor, like Notepad Plus (it's free). And, yes, you can change anything at any time for any reason, as long as you still have the login and password for the site.

i would start with phpbb for the blog portion. Just install and good to go.

As for video, you'd better use Flash, or rather flash video (.flv), for flash video is viewable on most operating systems, via the widely available Adobe Flash Player and web browser plugin. In order to enable your website can play flash video, you need to do something important: On server side, you need to install a video to .flv converter engine, for the videos uploaded by customers will be in different formats, you need to convert all of them to .flv on your host web server. On customer side, you need to design a .flv player, you can do manually with Adobe Flash CSX or with flash video player maker which are available on market. On this point, you can use Moyea web player pro - http://www.flash-video-mx.com/web-player-pro/ which I think is a quick and easy solution to add videos and customize the media player on your website. Yes, you can edit the template in Dreamweaver if you have knowledge and experience on web design.

Yes you can change the templates.. I suggest you have a look at http://www.hosting24.com they come with unlimited webspace and unlimited data transfer and you can go with them on a monthly or yearly basis with a money back guarantee. They come with a website wizard and ready made scripts for your site. Also when you sign up with them if you enter in a discount code they will give you 25% off their ridiculously cheap hosting plans. code to use is 25OFF I host all my sites there and have been more than pleased with their help and support, I hope this helps Lou

HostGator is The best choice to start with …. http://besthostingcompanies.info/?p=14 Get First Month For Only 0.01 $ Hostgator is solid and you can have unlimted addon domains too Hostgator is about the best you can get with shared hosting Yeah.... For less than $10 per month, you can host as many domain name as you want. I use hostgator myself, because I like how much they give you to start with so you can grow before you need to upgrade, but there's plenty of room to upgrade as well. Good support, live chat if you want to ask them anything - even before you buy. My account was activated within 10 minutes and they replied to support tickets promptly. Hostgator offers different size plans so you can start small and upgrade as needed.

It depends on where you buy the template from. If you buy the template from the hosting company, you will probably not be able to modify it. But, if you buy the template from a place like templateogre.com, then yes, you will have access to all of the files and will be able to change everything. These are the steps you would take: 1. Get a hosting account 2. Purchase a design package (not a template from your host) 3. Upload the files and customize with Dreamweaver You will have to know the basics of FTP and HTML. The links I pasted below are for entertainment and personal pages. I've purchase a lot of templates from these guys before and have a made a ton of websites using them. They're the best out there.