In order to make your own website from scratch, you have to spend a lot of time planning or else you will encounter some rough periods when you get into the actual coding. There are some web designers that actually prefer to go solo flight with the entire web design process because the individual has full control of the site structure as well as every site element. It is a lot of work though and once you are finished, you will most likely spend some time tweaking the site and making other changes to improve the look or interface. Web design teams, on the other hand, can do the job faster since one person can focus on the design while other people can handle the coding and other site aspects.
If you do not have certain skills like coding, layouting or graphic designing, you may have to join a team too in order to finish the website. But if you really insist on having full control of the website design from start to finish, the least you can do is to rely on several website solutions.
Online Utilities
Making a website is actually very easy because there are a number of developers that create free online tools to assist novice web developers. A color scheme generator is one example of a useful online tool that helps you figure out a good color scheme for your website. There are also other nice tools like favicon generators, button creators and even template creators. Using multiple online tools can help you accomplish some of the things you are not good at or at least help you build certain elements of the website much faster.
Web Authoring Tools
Before online utilities were abundant, people that had to create a quick website had no choice but to use a word processor to make a very basic website and export the document to HTML or load up their favorite text editor and type raw HTML codes. But using a web authoring tool can significantly improve your productivity. Some web authoring tools are freeware so you can get a glimpse on how useful these programs are. Then you can move on to some of the more advanced commercial applications. These programs have a free trial so you might be able to make your first website before the trial expires. If you need to build the website quickly, find a program that comes with free templates so you can focus more on adding the content.
With these tools alone, you can create a good foundation of your website. From there, you can scout around the Internet for free graphics that you can use or software that you can use to make your own graphics. Then if you need some professional touches, ask a professional freelance web designer to help out. Since you made the basic structure of your site, the designer shouldn't charge so much for adding the finishing touches to your site.