It used to be that you needed a full-time computer geek to maintain your site and do all the work for you. Now, running your own site is almost as easy as sending an email. If you can send and receive email, you can do most of what it takes to run a website.

It used to take a lot of behind the scenes work to get things done. Now, once the basic site is set up, you just need to know how to update the content on the pages. For most people, it's not that hard to learn. The big thing is to get the site put in place initially. You can let your hosting company do that, and then you're off and rolling.

Have you ever purchased something over the web? Have you ever filled out a form on a site with your name and address? Then you click the Submit button to send the information to the site? That's exactly the kind of thing you'd be doing to add information to your site.

You basically fill out a form with information you want on a page. You usually have to give the page a name, and tell where you want the page to show up on your site. Then you fill in the information you want to show up on the page. Click the Submit button and you're done.

Hard to believe how far it's come. All this isn't to say you won't need some help now and again. You do want to make sure that you put your site with a host that offers to help you when you need it. In fact, there are now hosts that offer instructions and tutorials to help you along the way.

Now you might be thinking that all this sounds good, but what about ithe design and layout of the site. If you're not a graphics designer, no problem. Most of the sites allow you to use what's called a template. You can purchase a template or have a designer make one for you. There are free templates out there too.

The template has all the pictures and colors for the site. The program that runs your site knows how to use the template and add your information to it so it looks the way you want. The information you add just gets inserted into the template when someone goes to a page on yours site. Just like the main site, once the template is in place, you don't have to do anything else with it.

If running your own site is something you've wished you could do but have been afraid to try, stop worrying and give it a shot. For as easy as things have become, most anyone can do it.