Small business web design questions

[Bigdumbanimal]

Hey all,

I have little experience in professional web design. In the past I have made simple pages with easy to use programs such as dreamweaver, mostly for recreational and academic purposes. I wish to now create a website for a small business I am trying to bring to the internet. I have read tons of offers by companies to host and maintain the website for me, but I wish to learn how to do it myself for a multitude of reasons, mostly my own personal satisfaction of understanding more about computers and the internet.

With that said, I am looking to set up all the basics of a traditional online store/website you see out there with email@.com, purchasing via credit card online and all the bells and whistles to give it a professional appearence. I would normally opt to allow a company to host it for me, but it seems almost confining and costly I have avaiability to a server to run the site on. I would like to know what programs and or guides are available to get started in hosting a site myself and to set up the whole e-commerce side to it? If that isn't the viable option and I am better of having someone host my site for a monthly fee, where do you recommend I go, considering these companies are a dime a dozen it seems. Thanks in advance for any help.

[kram 2.0]

Hey,

To start off, did you take a look at the Creating a Website/Development Guide? That should be a good place to start off with recommendations on servers and programs.

kram