These were the only real choices you had before:

• Pay for a site:  Someone designs a site for you, hosts it and charges you.  They don't maintain it, you are responsible for all of the pages, files and uploading.  Design services can run into the hundreds of dollars and more.  Hosting is usually $19.95 a month or more.  If hosting is less or "free", then you have ads popping up all over the page. 

• Do it yourself:  You are going to have to buy page design software (money out of your pocket) or know HTML coding.  You have to locate a host (again paying probably $19.95 a month or more).  You are going to need to know how to upload with an FTP program.  Last but not least, you have to spend the time designing and maintaining the web pages.

• Free Web Page Sites:  These are like Tripod or Geocities.  They are OK if you don't mind ads popping up everywhere.  They have some simple web page tools and you can get by without knowing code, but you are still going to have to spend the time to do it all.