creating a site

I am going to build a site, like everyone else, i have some questions. I dont want to build for money, its for me, I guess a private thing, if people look its fine but really I want my own space.

i have some questions.

I own as a site name my gamertag. Does Microsoft own the gamertag by default? If I setup the site I assume they wont notice until it starts making money, which will never happen.

Is Mezzanine good for me? I have no experience doing this.

Bootstrap?

Wix?

Im looking at things but Im a bit overwhelmed.

Squarespace?

It costs do I want to commit money?

Anything I forgot? Content management system? Bluehost.com, joomla, wordpress, drupal.

How do I do this?

I'm having a hard time understanding some of that, but I'll just mention a few things.

Microsoft doesn't have any ownership over your Xbox Live Gamertag - it's just your username. You're free to use it however you want.

Also, you mention things like Mezzanine, Bootstrap (I assume you're referring to Twitter Bootstrap), and Wix as if they're alternatives to each other, but those are all very different things. You have a ton of options for building a website, but before you can make a decision, you really need to have a clear idea about what your site is going to do, how deep you're willing to go on the technical side, and how much time and money you're interested in investing in the venture.

I'd start with tumblr

Real talk, Tumblr is actually a pretty good option for a personal website. If you're willing to invest a little time in developing a custom template, a lot of people won't even initially be able to tell that it's a Tumblr page.

Yeah, since you express a bit of confusion about your options, tumblr is probably the way forward. You can have your custom domain point to it and you already have a built in potential audience.

Tumblr huh? Im over thinking this. ill look at it. Ive never paid attention to tumblr, seen it and passed right by, like Snapchat.

Really depends on what you want to do with your site. Tumblr and wordpress are great options if some blog posts are all that you're looking for. They don't cost and work well with domain names too.

As a professional website developer, I'd also say tumblr or squarespace is a good option. It would be a good way to get your feet wet. You have a lot of themes to choose from, and they make it easy to set up, and eventually create your own themes. I would personally avoid Wix.

The following is too much information. You don't know how far the rabbit hole goes. Hook me up if you want more advice.

If a tumblr isn't enough for you, and you want more control over the types of content you would like, I would wholeheartedly recommend Webhook, by friend of the site, Dave Snider. This will help you build up the structure of your site very quickly. You would need to learn how to style your website, which is one of the more easy tasks in web development, but does have it's learning curves. There are some downsides, though. Your website would be a static site, which means although it will run blisteringly fast, you will not be able to easily add comments, a forum, or a contact form without using third party services. And it does have a monthly price tag of $9, but I think that is well worth what you get.

Anything further I wouldn't recommend, but here it is for your information. If you wanted to learn how to build something from scratch, if nothing is good enough, you could look at some Javascript based services. Most traditional services required you to learn multiple programming languages to build the server, work with a database, and finally write the website. Now there are services where you need only Javascript. Examples are the following:

Ghost, a node.js lightweight alternative to Wordpress.

Meteor, a framework to create your own custom sites. Isomorphic - means your code for the server can be identicle to the website bit. You don't even know why this should blow your mind.

Node.js based websites. Look into MEAN.io.

Finally, as a well deserved mention, is Wordpress. I mention Wordpress, as it is still in my opinion the most feature rich blogging platform out there. It is relatively easy to turn a static website into a working blog. Here is a caveat on this one; I've had some pretty scary hacks on wordpress sites in the past, where I have lost everything, and although I think it was my fault rather than Wordpress, you would need to consider whether you wanted to learn how to keep your site, and your database that Wordpress uses, secure. going the wordpress route would mean that you have to consider hosting, including the costs involved. Tumblr would host your stuff for free.

Yep, I would recommend using Tumblr or WordPress depending on your needs. You would need to pay for hosting otherwise, and they should be popular enough to make it easy to troubleshoot when you need to. You might want to grab your own domain name too with GoDaddy or Namecheap or Hover and the like (included with Squarespace if you decide to go that way), so that could be consistent if you change it later.

Edit: oh I guess you already have your domain name, I didn't get that the first read through. In that case, there's no harm to getting anything up on WordPress and it would be pretty useful for learning IMO.

Square Space?

If you wanna be a small business man..

A duder here made a site with Wordpress and it worked fine, I wrote some stuff for it and it seemed easy enough to use.

Then we have Squarespace, offer code Bombcast. I've seen some nice little sites use it with success.

Keep it simply and straightforward, I suggest a free Wordpress or Tumblr site. Make your goal to make content on a regular basis. Fancy CMS layouts graphics/logos and other fancy design aesthetics can't save boring writing. That's your first hurtle. Once you've toyed with WP/Tumblr then you can assess which specific tools do you need to further craft your work. Personally, I think Tumblr is easier to pick up and start and has a tight community of new writers/bloggers.

Everbody has been really helpful, thank you. Im sorry the post wasn't clear about some things.

Well, creating a website is more complicated than most people think, so it's okay to be a little confusing at first. However, don't fall into the trap of thinking that you have to buy a bunch of books to become a great designer. Don't get me wrong, there are some really good books at there (I have a few myself that I had for my web programming classes in college); but for just getting started on the road to being a web design wizard, you can find a lot of useful tutorials and lessons online for free.

During the wild beginnings of Giant Bomb, I would have lots of talks about design stuff with Snider, Ethan, and the other Whiskey Media design gurus and they would tell me how they got a lot of their training/knowledge through free sources on the Internet. I'll try to dig up their messages and recommendations for good online resources for you.

If you new to this, then I would go with either Tumblr or Squarespace just to get started. I personally wouldn't go with Wordpress or Joomla. As a developer I have used them both, and they can be very problematic. You dont need to spend a lot to get your site up and running. Your gamertag should be fine, I dont think Microsoft would bother you about it. :)

Locking this down since it's about nine months old and was only bumped to post spam.