Website Building Software

This question assumes that you're building a static website, rather than a dynamic, portal or community website - because if you intend to make a site like that, you probably already know what you're doing!

For any website to come together, you'll need a few different software packages. You'll need:

1. Something in which to write your pages.
The industry standard program to create web pages is DreamWeaver, and deservedly so. Unfortunately, it's also quite expensive; there's an open-source HTML editor called NVU which is also good for building websites, and is free. You can download it here.
Microsoft has also released some programs capable of writing HTML - FrontPage and Word can make HTML files, but they're commonly regarded as pretty abysmal, and also quite expensive. My recommendation to you is to save your money and download NVU instead.

2. A program to create some graphics for your site.
The industry standard is PhotoShop, which is an excellent graphics package. Again, unfortunately it's very expensive.
And again, there's an open-source equivalent available free of charge!
G.I.M.P stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program, and is available free of charge here (be sure to get the binary, not the source).

3. An FTP client, to upload your files to the space inside your hosting account.
A lot of HTML editors and website building programs have an FTP client built in. If you've got one that doesn't, our recommendation is FileZilla, which is available free of charge here.

4. If you don't have FireFox already, you should definitely install it.
FireFox is the second most-popular browser in the world, and is set to take over from Internet Explorer as the most popular if it keeps going at this rate. It renders HTML according to the standards set out by the W3C, as opposed to Internet Explorer, which goes by its own rules. As such, HTML editors that cater to Internet Explorer might make sites that FireFox has difficulty displaying, and vice versa. You should always strive to make your website work in any web browser, and the first step towards that goal is installing a range of browsers on your machine. Download FireFox for free, here.

Note - all of these programs can also be downloaded in portable form, so you can put them on a USB flash drive and run them from any computer without having to install them - very, very useful indeed. Have a look at the free software you can get from portableapps.com.