Let's just say that I wanted to make a wallpaper website. How exactly would I get started? As for design, do I need to be very experienced in HTML to make a decent-looking site, or are there programs to make sites with little or no coding? I assume one makes profit by advertisements, but must also pay a fee for a server (correct?). Would I be able to make any profit, or is this idea unreasonable?

I think you have to use HTML, there are probably some templates that you can use and some that you can probably manipulate to get what you want. Or you can just highlight all of the pages you want from caedes and paste it on the page you want to call you're own, i'm so stupid lol.

A really awesome program for working on webpages is macromedia's dreamweaver. If you want to make a page i would really recomond learning HTML. Its not that difficult if you get a book or check out some tutorials. Also if you want to make a really awesome page like this one you are probably going to want to learn some more advanced langauges as well like php or something. That will make it so you can do some more interesting stuff.

I'm guessing that you're aiming this question at me? =)

As for getting started, I suppose that you'd need some sort of content management system (CMS). This is the server-side programming that makes the site dynamic and interactive. You can use existing ones, but for anything very custom you'd need to know how to program extensions and plugins for it (usually a language like Perl, PHP, ASP, etc). For caedes.net I've written both the CMS and extensions myself (in Perl). As with any website, you'll need to be able to provide custom HTML, and as Milo points out you can code it yourself or use one of the many available WYSIWYG HTML editors.

Now you second question is a bit foggier. Yes you have to pay for a web server (or at least website service) as well as a domain name. This can range anwhere from $10 to hundreds of dollars a month (the dedicated server that runs caedes.net costs around $160 a month.

You can make money from advertising on the site, but it is not easy to even pay for your hosting fees. This is because your hosting fees will generally increase along with the number of your visitors (and hence the site's income). The other problem is that art related websites are generally on the bottom of the barrel when it comes to what advertisers are willing to pay. I think this is because it is generally asumed that the site would cater to poor artists and young people with no jobs.

Another issue is that your site needs to have a certain number of visitors per day before more advertisers will even consider allowing you into their network. It can take a lot of time and money to get visitors.

So my suggestion is that desktop wallpaper would not be the best website genre if you are interested in turning a profit. If however you are doing it for fun then it might be worth it to you.

I will have to agree with Caedes on this. A desktop wallpaper site, is definitely not a site where you'll be turning a profit. Also there is alot of other things that you have to consider. Copyright and site promotion being the most important.

Even if you allow people to upload their own images, how will you make sure that they retain the copyright of the images. Liability etc.

Site promotion is also the most difficult part. Unless you are willing to pay huge amounts for promotion it can take many months, even years to get your site a moderate amount of traffic.

However, if you are doing it for fun, or for love of the subject matter it can be rewarding in a non-profit sort of way.

Thank you all very much, this information is very helpful.

Like the man said, to do a half-way decent site you'll need to use server-side coding. If you can't program in a markup language like HTML, then it's safe to assume you've not been exposed to something like C++, which bears a passing resemblance to scripting languages like PHP or Perl (in my limited experience).

If I were you, I'd code some basic sites, using the many tutorials and guides available, and then work your way on from there. You'll need to gain some understanding of Javascript and CSS too. Before playing around with something like PHP you might want to do a course or read some books on that type of programming.

the guy at mac desktops has been posting his financials for a while ... and he knows the hexidecimal numbers for RED from memory .. doesn't even have to look 'em up anymore

the walls ran thick with RED

and *caedes danced around the matter rather eloquently ... the short version is .. you won't be charming the ladies from your expense account lamborghini with MZ's Art Site for a license plate

Yes, unfortunately that's the thing with image intensive sites. They are expensive to run and needs loads of bandwidth and space which makes up most of the costs involved.