So I have a freelance writing business.

Basically I'll write anything for anyone willing to pay.

I would like to make up a website I can direct potential clients to, in order to look at rates, and see examples of my work.

But I don't know the first thing about setting up a website and designing it.

I'm not looking for anything fancy, or expensive...just something that is functional and doesn't look like a grade 7 school project.

Can anyone inform me?

aren't you a damn scientist?

MS frontpage.

Since you are in the artistic line i would search online for freelancing guys who build sites and have him build you a template which you can update later.

As far as setting up a website you're going to need a domain name and hosting (I don't know if you know that but I thought I'd throw it in there). You can purchase a domain from http://www.godaddy.com or anywhere else (I see you're from Canada so I'm not entirely sure if you should purchase from GoDaddy or not) and hosting from anywhere that you can find, a simple website that doesn't use a lot of bandwidth shouldn't be more than $5-$10/month (again thats US). From there its just designing it. Creating fancy stuff might take you a while to learn by yourself, but check out http://w3schools.com for a good reference for HTML. If you really just want a simple template stuff (which can be pretty nice), if you have a mac or know anyone with a mac check out iWeb, its a pretty simple program to work with to create websites and you can upload them directly to your server (host).

Yeah.. GoDaddy for the domain name. Google web hosting companies. You should find one under 10 dollars a month.

Get something that has MySql and PHP support so you can actually buy/download a php layout. (I havent updated myself in about 3 years) but last time, i have used e107 (e107.org) and it was pretty easy after all. What I did was, I had Dreamweaver MX (Macromedia), did basic designs there such as text, images etc... and then copied the code and pasted it on e107's web layout program. It was pretty easy afterall.

If you are new into web design, don't even bother designing your own page, unless you are good with photoshop and all.
Get Dreamweaver MX, get a host that supports MySQL database and PHP, buy your own domain name from godaddy.com or some hosts even give the domain names themselves for addional fee, boom, you are done. YOu should have your website in a week or two.

I also have a bunch of templates for e107, I can send them to you.

Wordpress or Joomla. Case closed.

I'll have to look into all of these.

Thanks

Fuck...I have had iWeb all along!

I accidently whole internets.