Most of us will have a dream of creating a website, but we dont know where to start and how to start. I will explain you the steps you should follow for creating a website.

1. Decide the niche/purpose of your website. Make sure that there are less competition and more search for your niche/keyword. Now google and find out how many websites are there with the same niche. If you have a very few websites then you are lucky.
2. Decide whether you want to create a simple website or a forum or a blog based on the niche you have selected.
3. If you want to create a simple website, you can download or create a template and start building your website.
4. If you want to create a forum or CMS, then there are a lot of free softwares available.You have to decide what software you are going to use. Try those softwares with some demo sites. Visit http://www.forum-software.org/ for forum softwares or http://php.opensourcecms.com/ for CMS softwares.
5. Decide a domain name that is relevant to your niche, and register for a domain name and web hosting. Lot of work should be done here to select a best domain name and a web host.
6. Make your site SEO friendly, do SEO from the beginning, SEO is very important for making your site popular.
7. Update your site regularly with fresh and relevant topics, without this your site remains dead...!
8. Advertise about your site and your new topics in some social bookmarking sites, social networks, link exchange, forum signatures, comments in relevant blogs and more, otherwise not a single person will know what you are doing and it will also help you to improve your PR and the number of visitors to your site.

If you find this post useful, then dont forget to comment...!

Regards,
Srinivasan