How to set up your altar?

I read that witches need and altar for some rituals and spells and I have absolutely NO freaking idea how to start. Can it be a regular table or night? Do I carve stuff in it? Please can someone just give me a rundown? It would be a gigantic help. Thanks

http://www.enchantedworks.com/db/view_article.php?story_id=20050403111341
http://blessedbe.sugarbane.com/altar.htm
http://www.willowgrovemagick.com/how-to-set-up-a-wiccan-altar.aspx
http://paganwiccan.about.com/od/wiccanandpaganrituals/ss/BasicAltarSetup.htm
Here are a few sites that helped me majorly. I hope they help out you also!

A work place is where you choose to practise your magick or just simple meditate.
It can be anywhere you want. It can be a whole room or even a corner in your bedroom.
The place someone chooses must bring calmness to him/her and security. It also must give you the feeling that you can connect with higher things like energies or even spirits and deities.
First thing you need to do is cleanse it. So you will feel only positivly and pureness. If you try to work in a place where you can not be inspired it will be impossible to come through your personal barriers and perform anything.
A work place can have things in it like a table and stuff that you will use for your practises candles, crystals ect.
All these things must be cleansed before being brought in your work place.
Inside our work place we can have a flat surface like a table so we can put candles and other objects that can be needed during our practise. The size of the surface is not important as long as it works for us.
Above the surface you can put a piece of fabric that you will only use for this specific reason so that its energy will not be tainted from unwanted resources. The color can be chosen depending on the practise you will do on it or what feels better to you or you can choose white which symbolises the purity of your intentions.
In case you can have a stable work place you can put above the the surface of your work place things that represents you as statues, images, talismans, lucky charms, crystals and whatever pleases you. After all this is your work place and you need to feel positive inside of it. So you can put in your work place anything that inspires you and you use in your practises.
And one advice from personal experience make sure the flamable objects are away from the candles when you light them..