I'm new to making websites but i am running an under 18s dance event and i thought it would be better for promotional purposes if i had one. I bought the domain www.drowned-in-sound.co.uk (as that's the name of my event) and now i have no idea what to do, i though it would be simple but i appear to have bitten off a lot more than i can chew. I just want a basic site with a forum and a one that i can upload pictures and music to from previous events for the users to download. Does anyone have any helpful advice for me? thanks, it would be much appreciated.

Is there PHP on your server? http://wordpress.org/download/ , then pick from one of the many free themes. Then, add plugins to allow music to be downloaded. I don't know if there's a forum plugin, but I think you can live without that one. It still might be a lot to chew on since you're a beginner, but it's the best suggestion I have.

wayfarer is absolutely right, wordpress would be a great choice. if you know absolutely nothing about this, then use that, it's really user-friendly and good looking.

if you still haven't got a web hosting and don't want to spend money on it, i'd recommend u use ByetHost; it's pretty good for a free webhosting company. easy to setup and registration is immediate

hope this helped

Vote #3 for Wordpress. I started a site using them two months ago and it is averaging over a hundred visitors per day. I have been publishing an article every two days though and they are well optimized for keyword phrases.

Wordpress is excelelnt for articles and there are a ton of free themes. Enabling comments will give you some forum like ability. Starting a full fledged forum is a very tough job that takes a lot of work and time before it catches on.

Wordpress or any of the free forum software can be installed with a few mouse clicks from most modern control panels.

Most skins/themes are fairly simple to install.