This website is like a shady chinese buffet.
Some of it tastes great and will have you coming back for more, some of it is dirt ass roadkill that stinks like shxt and tastes like shxt. After tasting the crap a few times you will learn what to avoid. But you will also learn what you like.
There are some serious kooks here, there are some serious aholes here, there are some good people here, there is some good information and services offered here.
Its the same like life, only condenced and somewhat overly biased at times. You are on an internet gun forum after all, not a spiritual yoga forum.
Back to the question. Figure out what you want in a handgun first. Polymer or steel? Do you want chrome, nickel or tactical OD/Coyote brown as colour options? Do you want to do IPSC or IDPA with it? What calibers are you comfortable with? SA/DA or striker fired? Do you have a bias toward Chinese, American or Europoean guns? Do you want something with history, or something new with all the tacticool bells and whistles?
What aftermarket do you want it to have?
You don't have to narrow it down completely, but answering a few of those questions will narrow your choices. For example, if you want an SA/DA gun with a hammer instead of a striker fired gun in 9mm you eliminate alot of guns like glocks, XD, SR9 etc etc etc. Lets say you also didn't want a fullsize, but a mid or compact. You're choices narrowed even further. Right now, I can think of SIG229 or Norc Sig228copy or CZp07 that hit those choices of a DA/SA hammer fired handgun that isn't fullsize. And there you have it, figure out what you are looking for, and then its much easier to tell you whats available.