How do I go about making my website idea a reality with almost no technical knowledge of how the internet works?

Google Sites Doesn’t allow much for creativity or design, but it’s free and that’s why I appreciate it.

@jaketheripper it really depends on the extent of the idea. Simple things can be relatively straightforward, but more involved projects will likely require you to get a team together. Any chance you could share the scope of your vision with us so we can better direct you where to go next?

wordpress

Do you have money to invest? If so, you can easily hire a team and make it happen rather quickly.

If not, you could try Craigslist and offer a cut of the profits to all the out-of-work developers out there.

There are web site building software such as WebPlus Website Maker and SiteSpinner, and many hosting companies offer pre-packaged modules. But if your site idea is something truly new and original and/or you have ideas for unique or unusual features, you have no choice but to learn programming and write it from scratch. But if you’re really motivated, it’s not all that hard to learn PHP and MySQL.

Start by educating yourself. Given that you don’t know much about the internet, there’s a good chance that there are a dozen or more sites out there that do what you think should be done, only they’re doing it better, faster, and cheaper.

To my knowledge there is no website that caters to the niche this site would. The site would require a level of interactivity similar to fluther. I know how to make a basic web page but I don’t want to/know if I’m capable of learning that kind of programming. If I needed to hire people to build it from scratch, how much startup money would I need?

It really depends on the site. Without knowing exactly what you are looking for it is hard to tell. I was able to toss a QandA site together using Wordpress and a few plugins in a few days. It isn’t as nice as Fluther but it mostly works.

But replicating something like Last.fm is a lot different.

I have been asked to work on projects with the promise of getting a percentage of the profit. The catch is they thought their idea was so awesome that they wanted me to sign a contract saying that I would make the site before they would actually tell me what the site was. They were worried that I would steal the idea. 100% percent of the proposals were met with laughter.

Sure. That’s what Web developers do for a living. I am one.

We convert people’s ideas into code and launch their sites. If you decide to look for a developer to do it, be sure you discuss how it will be maintained. A good developer will build in a content management system, and provide training in using it so that after launch, you can take care of day-to-day changes and additions yourself. Unscrupulous developer will put half the site on their own server and give you no CMS and no training, trying instead to lock you in to prepetually paying them for every tiny change.

Your question is kind of like saying “I want to start performing surgery on people’s brains even though I don’t have even a basic understanding of human anatomy or biological processes.”
Do you see a problem here?