The first thing you have to ask yourself is what type of website you want to create. Is it a personal website where you put your thoughts and have a photo gallery etc.? Is it a web site about a hobby of yours that you want other people to drop by and discuss about it? Is it a website where people will find information about something? Is it a website that you want to make money out of it?
Think about your visitors
As you can understand there are many different types. All of these types require a different approach from you, the techniques that you will use or the tools that you need to build them. Each of the them should be handled differently. The single most important reason for this is your visitors. What are your visitors looking in your site? What do they want to do there and how can you make it easier for them to find what they are looking for. What is the point of the website if everything is not geared toward your visitors? Ok maybe your site is a very personal one that you and a couple of friends is the target group. I doubt that this is the case though.
So, rule number one is, always think about what your visitors want from a site such as the one that you want to create. If they find what they are looking for they 'll keep coming back and they will tell their friends. Isn't that what you want? Yes, I thought so..
Website type dictates the technology used
The type of the website almost entirely dictates the required technology/ platform. It is not obligatory to use this or that but in essence, in each case (type) a certain or more technologies will help you achieve your goal more easily and produce better results than others.
If for example you want to create a site where you post your thoughts on a subject a blogging platform such as the Blogger or Wordpress is the best choice since everything is oriented towards posts and their management. You will not need to handle complicated technologies, learn a scripting language etc. All you need to care about is writing your posts, the rest is handled for you by the platform. Of course you can do other cool stuff as well, but you get my point.
On the other hand if you want to create a more complex website, where you will have dynamic services and maybe later add even more complex components (a shopping cart for example), a more complex system such as joomla is required. It is not that you cannot create a site that offers similar services with the one or the other technology. It is which technology will help you achieve your goals easier and produce better results. Do not worry yourself with the technologies I mentioned. Just worry about the type for now.
On your way to create a successful siteSo, to sum up the first thing you need to think about is what type of website you want to create. It is the most important decision since this will help you decide on the structure of the website, the content and the technology that you will use. It is not like you will change technology or site topic every day. You have to pick one and be consistent with it in order to reach your goal. If you do that, you are half way to succeeding.
