How Do I Make a Website?

Agreed: Real webmasters use a text editor [grin]. Coupled with good use of css and a means of replicating navigation etc content between pages (php is great for this) it really isn't that hard, and it makes it very easy to keep sites consistent and standards compliant. But this isn't the way you want to go for a first website!

One of the best things you can do is have a good book to hand. Most of the O'Reilly stuff is good. I rate "Web Design in a nutshell" as a great reference.

nVu is a freeware download and it's quite good but Frontpage is easier to use and Dreamweaver is the dog's bs. But once you have got the hand of it all you'll mainly be writing it all out longhand as it makes for neater code. You'll still be better off with a webdesign package than notepad as it will colour code all your tags for easy debugging.

Make sure you check for multi browser compatability. If it works on IE and Firefox you have got 99% of your audience.

Build up slowly. Start with pure html, then add a little javascript and start moving all your style statements out of the html tags and into seperate css files. php is a doddle if your are used to other programming languages (C, C+) but you won't need it straight away.

Don't be afraid to use frames and tables. You can achieve the same effects with css when you get going and frames in particular get a right old sl*gging from the community. But they are an easy way to get going.

Have a look at your favourite websites and try and decide why they are so good. Be careful when adding graphics that you don't make the page slow to load. Even with high-speed broadband this is still important.

And have fun.