...now I am aware that this has been brought up before, and I have also read the stickies but things change quickly and I need advice based on my own situation. The following bullets sum it up quite well I think...

* I have exactly £zero to spend;
* I need to maintain it myself regularly and quickly;
* I have an idea of the design in my head which I am going to map out in a graphics editor first;
* It will incorporate CSS and HTML - absolutely no flash or 'fancy fancy';

I have iWeb but it is not going to do what I want it to. It is discontinued, has no SEO without bodging it up, and won't do the CSS that I would like it to do.

For an idea of what my end result would be look at this cheeky Manc website. I want to do the 'frames' style navbars, but using CSS as frames is old and not appropriate anymore I don't think...according to my developer friend anyway. It will also incorporate a media player hopefully, and I would like the main page content to come from a database if possible so it updates via that rather than hard type directly into the website code.

I have a smattering of HTML knowledge and I could probably find what I need for CSS, but really I don't have the time for hand coding and probably don't have the necessary skill anyway. I need a powerful WYSIWYG editor or an open source design heavy IDE akin to Dreamweaver - so my options (handly explained in bullets again) are...

* NetBeans
* Aptana
* Nvu
* Kompozer
* Hand Code...Nooooooooooooooo!

Does anyone have any experience using any of these and can help me assess their suitability? I'm going to download them and have a play around, but anyone who has had experience of them would be really helpful. In fact, any advice on this would be really helpful.

Thanks in advance, and sorry for the long winded story!
Tom

TL; DR - I want to make a website. I know what I want and how it will look, so how do I do this with no talent and no money on my MacBook?

What about a content management system like Joomla, Wordpress or Drupal..?

Lots of templates available, served from a database with dynamic content, lots of third-party plugin modules etc etc, not a lot of hand-coding needed at all, as long as your requirements don't get too specific...

I would look at Wordpress and see if there is an existing template for it that you can customise to get it close enough to what you are looking for by changing graphics etc. You'll be able to do quite a lot of customisation without going near the HTML/CSS.

If you do have exactly £zero to spend, bear in mind as well as actually building it, you'll also need to host it somewhere. I'm not sure what free hosting options offer these days but I'd expect to hit some restrictions, especially if you also want to host media at some point.

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http://www.partyfearsthree.co.uk

You've got enough money for some webspace that supports php? Wordpress.

You may want to check out http://bluegriffon.org/

It's a WYSIWYG content editor/website design tool that I have recently come across.

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http://www.biodiode.com

Thanks for the replies everyone.

Right - I have a domain and web hosting with GoDaddy so that's sorted. The reason I stated I have no money is that my budget stretched to that only. I thought that iWeb would be able to provide me with the things I needed but as I got deeper into it I found it's very limited. Hence the scrimp fest!

Now, I looked at WordPress but I am finding it hard to shake the "MySpace Layout" vibe I'm getting from it. Am I well far from the mark or should I really give it serious consideration? How are you all using the templates?

BlueGriffon was one that I saw and am considering (I forgot to mention it on the list), but am put off by the add-ons that they charge you for...one of which is full CSS support.

Thanks so far everyone.

A lot of big, important websites run on Wordpress - it's an excellent framework with a thriving community behind it. If you want to avoid the generic look, spend a few quid on a custom theme - there are some excellent themes available from sites like wphub and themeforest starting from about £20.