If you are able to host the website on your own server, I would recommend using a free HTML5 template, and customize it as you wish.... There are some great free templates available on the net. Customizing is not too hard, and if you know a bit of HTML and CSS, you can really work wonders. You can use editing software such as Microsoft ExpressionWeb (which I believe is now free to download). This may be the 'best' way if you are trying to establish a distinct brand for your lab. 

I'd try Joomla or WordPress. They're content management systems that are widely used. Both are highly costumizable and they allow for easy updates. I'm quite satisfied with the site I'm running myself. Installation is fairly straight-forward as long as you have server space somewhere.

Regarding your second question, I believe it never hurts to have a lab website.

Github + Jekyll + Bootstrap, see http://alex-lab.github.io 

Hi Jason Gao,

As Alex and Ingmar stated there are lots of programs that you can use to build a website, depends on the quality and structure (flash base, just html coding etc). In my opinion one of the quickest and user friendly FREE website building application is the google.sites online web site builder. With your gmail account you can build and use different templates too. The drawback is that the address always will start like: sites.google.com/sites/YOURSITE.

Here is an example i found:

https://sites.google.com/site/pyhonglab/

If you are able to host the website on your own server, I would recommend using a free HTML5 template, and customize it as you wish.... There are some great free templates available on the net. Customizing is not too hard, and if you know a bit of HTML and CSS, you can really work wonders. You can use editing software such as Microsoft ExpressionWeb (which I believe is now free to download). This may be the 'best' way if you are trying to establish a distinct brand for your lab. 

Wordpress or Google Sites

https://wordpress.com/

https://sites.google.com/

Check this one out just to give you some inspiration: http://learning.eng.cam.ac.uk/Public/Wolpert/WebHome . It has works, publications, members, etc. Using WordPress you can do much better than this.

http://learning.eng.cam.ac.uk/Public/Wolpert/WebHome

Hi Ingmar, thanks for your answer! As some of my friends also suggest to use wordpress, I want to ask if this way require programming skill? And also someone says that wordpress is suitable to build personal website, but not suitable for lab site, how do you think about it? thanks~

Hi Szabolcs, thanks for your suggestion. And I thinks the address does not matters. But sometimes google is not available in China.

Besides, do you think that people from all over the world will come to see a professor's lab site?

My personal suggestion is to use Joomla as it easy to use and you can do maintenance later yourself.

I know a freelancer Miss. Farhana, I hired her more than 3 times and i was 200% satisfied with web quality she delivered. Following is an example i came across http://www.reginaldfinley.com/

Her profile is here on odesk https://www.odesk.com/users/~010754fdac3a6ef9e0

and on elance https://www.elance.com/s/cimran12/

Many Thanks!

WORDPRESS IS VERY GOOD FOR MY NEEDS.....CHECK MINE

http://envirochemistry-archives.com/

Hi Joao, the example is your personal website, right? And moreover, I want to ask if most labs in MIT have websites? And are they satisfied with their lab websites? Great thanks!

Hi Jason,

It very depends on what you want the website to be capable of. I have designed websites from scratch using HTML, PhP and Javascript (modules). However, there are also great options available for wordpress.com websites, and their functionality can be easily extended using modules (some are free, others aren't). 

As an example: there are simple to implement upload-download modulus available, which can be installed as a plugin. 

Hope it helps,

Bart 

Please check the website: labit.io

You can create a page for your Laboratory, which is already fully functional. You don't need to know web-design and code. Just use it))

Please contact me and let me help you with set-up)

Cheers!

academig.com

Very good solution to build professional websites for labs.

site123. Easy to get started. Easy to update.