blkmage wrote:Dreamweaver is meant for professional use and is quite expensive - several hundred dollars.
HUH? I can buy it used on AMAZON for a hundred bucks. What's this several hundred dollars thing about? If you have a school contact, you can get the education pricing - which is about $150.00 for dw mx (NEW). If you don't need the latest and greatest version (which she won't, I guarentee it), I searched ebay and found copies of DW 4.0 on ebay for $30.00, $50.00, $70.00 and $120.00 depending on who's selling it.
I've given up on trying to get people to learn HTML. I tried for 10 years, and basically people are not that interested (in general). It's not practical. You can download a trial version of DW for FREE from the macromedia web site:
http://www.macromedia.com/software/dreamweaver/download/
It will run for 30 days, which gives you enough time to create the site. If you decide you *want* to use this tool, buy a cheap used copy.
Anyway, there are free versions of other packages that do GUI editing, but if you want something that spits out relatively nice code, dreamweaver is pretty much the only way to go.
To answer your other question, and FTP client is a program that will allow you to copy stuff you created (on your home computer) to the website. DW has an FTP client built into, though, so you don't have to even worry about that. For a first step, I'd recommend looking at other sites, and see what you want, then try to create something that has the same feel.
[rant = on]
Oh, and to the pink bottomed script kiddies that are going to flame me for using dreamweaver: save it. I do all my own coding by hand, and have been since '94. I do my editing in vi, so save your elite-est drivel for someone who acutally deserves it. If you can hand code a better site than mine (
http://www.flactem.com/ ) in under a week, maybe I'll listen to what you have to say - but I doubt it. (Sorry if that bugs people, but I always get flamed when I tell people to look at a gui tool. Some people think they are "leet" when it comes to computers, and try to "overawe" me with useless acronym usage.)
[rant = off]