What is the cheapest and quickest way to setup a new web site / service ?

[Chew Barker]

My current job is to invent and develop new products for the company. I have become fairly competent at spotting products that are likely to succeed (if they will make the company money and if the technology is available to deliver the product).

From observing some business practices I have noticed a problem that occurs in nearly every business and sometimes Joe Public has the same problem. The solution is a web based service that the public or businesses can use if they want to avoid the problem.

I want to set this up myself, as it is not the sort of product / service the company I work for are interested in offering (I've already made them enough money and this could make me lots). My problem is, this web site / web service is beyond my current developing skills. I don't want to give to much away, because the website is not a marketing tool for a business or a distribution channel for a product. It IS the product, what is the cheapest way to get someone with the know how to build what I'm looking for ?

What I've looked at:
-Doing it myself, Joomla looks promising and there might be a way to combine many of the extensions to provide the service. I'm a novice and this would take me ages .
-Web design studio, would charge me £30,000 for a piece of crap I have little control over.
-Getafreelancer.com, would probably be cheap enough, but it would be difficult to pitch my requirements without giving away the idea.
-Find a student and offer him equity and or some beer.

The problem I'm having is there isn't a template for this web service. Just as there weren't any auction templates when eBay started and there weren't any community video sharing templates when youtube started.

The most I'd like to invest at this stage is £500-£1000. I would like to be up and running by August/September this year.
What is my best option ?

[CRSP]

Craig, I'd be careful setting up a website if you're still working for this company. It seems you've spotted this opportunity as a result of working for them, and they may claim some stake in your new business if you set up now, while working for them.

However, without understanding what your website does, can you not just learn PHP and implement it yourself, quickly? You know Java already, and PHP's quite similar. All the tools to do so are freely available, too (Apache, PHP, MySQL).

[Chew Barker]

Thanks for the advice, I'll wait until I leave. I have no doubt that this new idea could be implement quite quickly using the technologies you have mentioned, however my free time is taken up restoring classic campervans as we have bookings coming in for this summer.

This new web service is a back up money maker, something that will make me some cash to pay the bills with a reasonably low level of input.

[tunaman]

Well, the "cheapest and quickest" way to set up a website is to register a domain (around $10) and get a hosting package (around $100/year) and install Joomla or WordPress (free). Hundreds of themes are available for both Joomla or WordPress, and with a little tweaking they can easily be made to look like a "regular" web site. Plus, using either of these apps means that they can be easily added to or edited as needed (no need to call a web developer to edit HTML or CSS files, for example).

Of course, your site appears to be a service, so I dunno what kind of app-specific programming you'd need to do to get it to work.