title: When asked "How do I make a website?" how do you answer?
body: <p>A (non-technical) friend of mine has asked me how to make a website. I get this question all the time. After a few questions I found out that she has an idea that could turn into a commercial site. I described three options to her:</p>
  
  <p>a) Get a book/enroll in a class/follow some online tutorials and learn how to do it. She's pretty smart and her personality seems like a good match for this sort of thing so I'm sure she could learn but she doesn't have a lot of time spare. Maybe if she started with one of those WYSIWYG editors at first? I stressed that this would take a longer than a couple of weekends of playing around.</p>
  
  <p>b) Hire someone to build it. Ranges from ultra cheap to ultra expensive, crappy to good and everything in between. I didn't mention sites like Rentacoder because she hasn't worked on a project like this before and doesn't know what to ask for. At this stage she'd likely ask for a Youtube-MySpace-Google for a few hundred bucks because she doesn't yet understand just how much is involved.</p>
  
  <p>c) Find someone technical and partner up with them. I explained that this can either work really well or be a disaster because she'd have to give up some of her ownership of the idea.</p>
  
  <p>How do you respond in these situations?</p>