Some of us just want to have a website. Funny pictures, selling socks, guitar lessons, we want to share something with the world. And people don't realize how easy it is to get a FREE website within a couple of hours.

Right, let's get started. What you need is:

1. A domain

2. Web Hosting

3. Content.

I am in no way responsible to what you use for content, but I can easily guide you to getting the other 2.

First up: domains. What's a domain? www.example.com, that's a domain. It's your website "name" if you want it. You can get paid ones and free ones. Generally .com, .org and such are paid domains, while more obscure ones, like .co.cc are free.To get a paid domain, I sincerely recommend GoDaddy, it's easy to use. I will, however teach you how to get a free .co.cc one.

Go to http://co.cc and check your domain availability. www.ducksgoquack.co.cc was free when this guide was written :D

if it sais

then you're OK. If not, try more until you get that.

When you've done it, click Continue to Registration, and then Create an account now.

Fill in the form, accept terms, register and sign in.

If all went well, it will say

Click on Set up, and the again on Set up.

At this point, you've got your own domain, and we're going to set up hosting.

Hosting is the actual space your website takes. You know, the memory where your text, images, movies, whatever resides. Again, you can buy or get free hosting, in this tutorial I'll teach you how to host your site for free at byethost.com .

Right, so, leave the browser with the domain setup page open, and get a new tab/window.

Go to http://byethost.com and fill in the form, activate it through e-mail, and you've got hosting

All that's left is to link them together. on to Part 2.

Now that you have a website, what do you want to do?

Advertise? With who?

Well, there's always Google, but we won't discuss them.

Here are some other networks I tested, and my results. Be aware that the website I used for my research was not this one, but another that brings in about 1000 unique visitors/day.

First up, I tried using AdBrite. Ran their ads for about a week, had a pretty nice run, in fact, what I liked most about them was that they were melding to my every page, i didn't really see lots of ads being out of context. And, even more, they sent traffic to my website!!! Not a lot, obviously, but they did!However, after a week or so, in which I got decent CTR and CPC, they decided to shut down my account, and sent me this:

Hello Publisher,

We've completed the review of your zone, verticals ( Zone ID #1766511 ), that you've submitted. Unfortunately, we are unable to approve it for our marketplace at this time due to the following reasons:

- Page Times Out/Server Not Found

My website had 100% uptime, so I can't really tell what that was all about.

After Adbrite, I went on to Bidvertiser. It took about 3 days to get approved, and after that i had the surprise to find pop-under ads on my website. I didn't agree to any of that, read the terms thoroughly, however, it appears to be an option you have to DISABLE, not the other way around. Apart from that, the ad targeting was horrible, being served only some browsergame ads that nobody clicks. Performance: 120000 pageviews - 5 clicks, $0.44.

Next experiment was Etology. They run plenty of adult ads, however I was not interested in those. As a result, after almost instantly approving my account, they started delivering Dating & Personals ads on my website, with the occasional browsergame included. However, the CTR rate was higher than Bidvertiser's, but they only paid me... brace yourselves... $0.007/click.

Final flop was Clicksor. Instantly after registering with them, they input flashing 1997 banners on my website. I had viewers email me about the horrible eyesores included. 30000 views and 3 clicks later, I decided this was enough, and removed all the ads from my site.

However, If you really need to advertise, go with Google. Or, if you get screened out, give AdBrite a chance. They're the only worthy competitors.

So you've installed Joomla!, set up your domain and started getting visitors. Problem is, you don't really know how many, where from, or anything at all. Best thing to do: get Google Analytics. It gets set up in a couple minutes, and it's got all the details you're after.

First up, go to the Google Analytics page, and click on Access Analytics.

Now, if you've already got a Google account (Gmail included) you can use it, but my personal recommendation would be to create a brand new one for every website you're about to track.

Create, or use your existing Google account and log in.

Click on Sign up.

Now, enter your website URL, a relevant name for it and set your time zone. Be very careful when setting your time zone, or you may become confused on to when the date changes.

Click on Continue, enter your name and country, then click on Continue again, check " Yes, I agree to the above terms and conditions.", then click on Create New Account.

You will see, in a text box to the right, something of the type:

<script type="text/javascript">

var _gaq = _gaq || [];
_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-19170273-1']);
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);

(function() {
var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;
ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';
var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);
})();

</script>

Copy the code onto your clipboard, and then on to Joomla!'s back end.

On the top menu, select Extensions -> Module manager.

Click on New, select Custom HTML, Click on Next.

Settings are as follows:

You can change the position to wherever you want, if you don't enable the title showing it won't display anything.

Then click the HTML edit button and paste your code:

Click on update, save your module and Refresh.

That's it, you've got Google Analytics!

To check your stats, just go the Analytics page, login, click Access Analytics and then "View Report"

Enjoy!