How to set up a website - help!

[greentown]

An artist friend is looking to set up a website to showcase his work.
Neither of us know how to do this and despite endless googling we're still confused.

Ideally, the website would be free to set up and run but we're not sure what this means in terms of 'domain names' and so on.
This is the kind of thing we have in mind:

www.fayballard.com/index.html

Could you recommend a way to achieve this from scratch?
He has the images from a digital camera and has written a CV.
Basically it's just a showcase for the paintings with an email address for people to contact him.
Would there be a way of measuring how many hits the website and individual images achieve?

Can this be done by novices? Can it be done free or very low cost? Or would you recommend a website company? And if so, who would you recommend?

Hi
my charity preschool have just set up their website. It was free to set up, but think it costs about £12.00 a month to run. Not bad really if it helps to bring in business.
Anyway the site is called yola.com, if that's any help to you.

I did mine through www.doyourownsite.co.uk it's easy and £10 one off for domain name and then £2.99 a month.

I use weebly....

funkychickenphotography.weebly.com/index.html

Completely free

Thanks for the tips all - he has checked them out and v impressed!
In case anyone else is interested, also looked at MrSite which seems v good and Create.net which has a free trial facility.

Create is the same as do your own site which I use.

Totally free website can be had at webs.com.

Wordpress?