website stuff?

[DOSS]

I don't know a thing about setting up this kind of stuff so hopefully someone here can add their .02 I want to start a website but I want only the front page (or a couple other small pages) viewable to the general public. everyone after that I would want to be able to select who could view the site.. I would want a small forum attached but mostly it would be static pages with images and text on it.

so how would you go about doing such a thing? I am not a website guru so don't bury me too deep .. what would it cost me to have something built and to host such a thing?

Thanks

 

[Caleb]

It could cost as little or as much as you want it to. If you want to put the work in to doing it yourself, you could use any one of the free CMS systems out there and get some cheap hosting from any number of host providers. On the other hand, you could pay someone to design something for you from scratch and get a nice (usually a little more expensive) server to host it on it could cost you quite a bit.

An way you do it, I STRONGLY suggest you use vbulletin for your forum software. There's tons of support (commercial) for it, it's extremely stable, and (IMO) most importantly it's very secure.