In early days, It was a very time-consuming work if you want to build and maintain your own website all by yourself. You need to learn and master how to write HTML code(or how to use a WYSIWYG editor), and every time you want to change any thing (for example, edit an article, add a webpage, etc), you need to edit the source code. And then, people developed dynamic websites driven by scripting language and database. These websites are more convenient to manage the content, but developing a dynamic website is much more difficult, you need to take more time learning scripting language such as PHP and database like MySQL. But nowadays, with the help of a Content Management System(CMS), you can set up your own website in just five minutes!

A Content Management System (CMS) is a computer application used to create, edit, manage, and publish content in a consistently organized fashion. CMSs are frequently used for storing, controlling, versioning, and publishing industry-specific documentation such as news articles, operators' manuals, technical manuals, sales guides, and marketing brochures. The content managed may include computer files, image media, audio files, video files, electronic documents, and Web content. (from wikipedia.org)

In fact, most of the dynamic websites should be considered as Content Management Systems, but the early dynamic websites were exclusive and developed specially for a certain company with different purposes. Now there are general CMSs developed for us to build our own websites. The most popular CMSs at the moment are Joomla!, Drupal and WordPress. They are all Open Source softwares and free to use. While they are all great applications and have both advantages and disadvantages. It is really hard to decide which one to use, but you must to compare these softwares (any other CMS included) and choose one of them to start. Don't waste too much time on comparison, you need to have a overlook and choose one to stick at it.

To set up your website, you can download the CMS package and upload it to your website server, then install it step by step. Here is the typical way to install your CMS software: you type in a url e.g http://www.yourwebsite.com/install in your web browser, and fill out some information needed (such as your website name, admin user name and password, database name, database user name and passwords, etc), then delete the install folder from your server after you finish the installation. Read the installation manual carefully before you start. If there are problems occur, don't give up. there will be err information showed on your browser and you can solve most of the problems according to the cues. And you can also ask your hosting service and the CMS community for help. You can also ask me for help, of course. I would try my best to help you out, and I will keep writing posts on these issues.

Want to setup a Joomla! Website? Find useful resources below:

Ready Made Joomla Websites + Video Tutorials + Bonuses.

The Ultimate Guide To Joomla - Step By Step Joomla Videos.