Although I am not new to HTML and stuff, I've just started to think of having my own website, and for a start, I wanted to make one that uses a database. And I learned it's quite complicated as I started reading about web servers, web application, dynamic web pages (these things are all new to me!). I am confused; how do you actually make such a site? I suppose it should be dynamic since I want a certain page to display data from a database on runtime, and to do that (as far as I know) I should have a web application to maintain it. Should I have a web server as well? Can't I have a remote server where I can store my database and a web applications to do all the stuff? If it would reach the point where I have to turn my computer on 24 hours to maintain my database-driven-website, I would rather forget all about it. I also have IIS and ColdFusion, which one is better for a novice like me? Thanks!

The last question is easy, IIS would be the easiest solution, and not even a bad one. You got a hell of a Server Management Application don't you think? It works easy, doesn't need a line of code to get it running. Like you said it yourself, you'll need a webserver, a remote server would do best in your case. Depending on the service the hosting company has to offer AND depending on the amount of money you want to pay for this all to happen. If you're new to server programming AND you want to keep your money in your pocket I'll suggest you use PHP-script on the server accompanied with a MySQL database system which happen to work well together. What I also think of being worth to suggest is using Borlands InterBase which works also fine with PHP and also easy to learn and use. ... Ok, I get it, you still didn't hear enough, did ya, ok. You can get rid of the heavy bucks your carrying around in those shorts. The place to be is Microsoft, they can do anything you want, as long as you have a money carrying problem, it's ok for them. You may program your serverscript in ASP or ASP.NET and use a Access Database or a SQL database. I won't discuss the quality, nothing to say about that, I think it's good and nice software but I'm talking about the money you will spend. So think about it. No money PHP - MySQL, money ASP / ASP.NET - MS ACCESS / SQL Server

Buy cheap webhosting, unless you really want to experience web hosting on the low end. CFML, PHP, and ASP/.NET are all capable platforms and work fine. It's kind of a toss up on which is easier (PHP is fairly easy though). You will find more help and free code with ASP and PHP than CFML. Arguably you will find the most help with PHP, but there are plenty of ASP fans. You can integrate some web servers with some server side languages and most databases. Coldfusion is different, of course. But you can pair PHP+MySQL with ISS (Apache is a better alternative, especially for generic hardware) or Zope+Access with Apache. The more exotic, the more money you will pay for hosting. LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP) is very reasonable ($10-$30/month). With default installations, most software is straightforward. Interacting with the database can be complicated, though I recall CFML making this simple.