Give me an idea!

[LnrdRthr]

I have started building a new website. It is in my signature. But I don't really know what I want to make it about. All I know is I want to make it and get practice.

Can you give me some ideas? I need to find an idea that will be easy to implement and something that will attract heaps of traffic and something that could be profitable maybe.

Or, better still - does anyone want to help me make it? Just like, for something to do? Maybe we can get a whole team of people working on different things?

I am totally open at this point. I have no ideas.

[Tubby]

Hi LnrdRthr, How old are you?
You seem to have an abundance of enthusiasm.

[kelliott07]

LnrdRthr I would write on things that I enjoy. Make a list of all everything you enjoy. Once done try to expand on one or two topics. I would not start writing about things other people like because you will run out of steam very quickly. Then it will become a drag. Find your wants and needs and expand on them.

[Dactyl]

You can always install a blog and write about your interests, I think thats the best choice for you since you have no idea of what you want to start.

[Rosalind]

I have started building a new website. It is in my signature. But I don't really know what I want to make it about. All I know is I want to make it and get practice.

If it's your first, you really don't need to define the subject matter closely, because you will most likely go on to make other, better, sites in future. In a year or two you may even want to forget all about your early experiments in webmastering. It's not uncommon.

What you need to do is discover what really fires you up, and it may not be what you first expected. Begin with writing about your hobbies, and what you do to unwind. Consider sport, politics, and what you do all day. Everything you do, everything you buy, everything you see and everything you think will provide you with potential topics to write about. The problem is not ideas, so much as which ideas to discard. Get used to seeing your whole life as material for your writing.

If you're young, remember that the laws of libel and copyright also apply to you, and it would be a good plan to learn something about them before you write a word. There are good summaries of this in The Writer's Handbook every year.

[sands]

You did not mention anything about your hobbies or work or qualifications. These would have given us some ideas. Anyway usually folks just start with a single idea or topic and then work from there. That is how my personal page came about. You could check it out in the signature below. When I began around 9 years back the site was poor in look as well as content. Over the years it just grew. So that is what I suggest, make a start. Put up something that interests you. Things will just develope from there.

[debase23]

How about a book? Select a fiction novel in the public domain (expired or no copyright) and write an outline as if you were doing a book report (gosh I hated doing outlines and book reports when I was younger. Fortunately it's useful.) Each section will equal a page; each page can have links to the finer points of your outline. You can design your web site as if it were the online presence of the novel; if you were doing Wuthering Heights, you could give Healthcliff a page of his own, opening with an overview of the character and linking to a biography, photos, blog or commentary from the character, links etc.
If you are taking web design classes, make your classwork part of your site.
An online site is your web design resume. If it is well done, fun and informative, you'll get the interest of the web community. Once you have a good network of quality link exchanges and traffic, you can start selling ad space, membership content, products, whatever. It's a lot of work - but nothing worth doing is easy.

Oh and also - don't worry about trying to find a topic for your site that will maintain your interest. Everything will get tedious, with brief spits of enjoyment. It's your prepration for coding on a professional basis.

[tyggemannen]

The best thing for shure is to make a site about something you know a lot about and is interesting you. Specially if its your first site, then you will have stuff to write about.