In the early days of the Internet, users published their content on their own servers. This required technical knowledge and reliable hardware and connectivity.
Hosting services in data centers soon emerged, but the user still needed technical skill to transfer content to the server in the data center and to integrate it in with other material, usually within a Web site.
Today, there are Web based services which eliminate the file-transfer and integration steps. Some, like blogs and wikis can host several types of data. Others, like Youtube or Flickr are more specialized. Here are examples:
These services are often free to the user, and are supported by ads or by charges for premium service.
One can often get started using these services with no technical knowledge. Advanced features may require some knowledge -- for example understanding of HTML, Javascript or CSS, but that can be learned as you go.
The cost of creating complete Web sites is also falling. Complex Web sites are often created using template-driven content management systems (CMS). Creating a site using a CMS is faster and easier than programming it from scratch because common features like uploading documents, registering users, adding a blog or chat to the site, etc., are implemented using preprogrammed modules, which are often developed by an open source developer community.
For example, Drupal is a CMS with an active developer community. CMSs are frequently used on intranets and extranets as well as the Internet, and you can see some examples of Drupal-based sites here.
CMS Review compares many CMSs.