Like Gonzo said, get a WYSIWYG editor. There's plenty out there. (Google DHTML HTML Editor). Another is FPExpress - a freeware version (very stripped down version) of Frontpage. It's not all that great though, but workable.
Page layouts - Use tables with a 100% width. Most pages have a header, content and footer, as well as 2-3 content columns (the left/right sides being used for menus).
CMS - If you're looking for a huge site, get some sort of CMS system (do a search. Wordpress is a free one that some like to use). If not, you can use javascript to pull in code from other pages. Just be careful about javascript though, as 10% of people have it turned off. Keep in mind though, if you make one change to a menu on one page, all pages need to be updated.
"3 Click Rule" - I forget where I heard this (either in college, or from researching for a college paper). The idea is, users don't like clicking anymore than 3 levels to get to content. It's best to not only have a main menu, but maybe a "Quick Links" section.
FTP Server - You need this to copy files to the webserver.
Web Hosting Server - Either use your Internet Account's name (
www.domain.com/~somename), or find a free hosting site. If it has php, you can use certain php scripts.
Here's a basic setup:
Code:
<html>
<head><title>My Webpage</title>
</head>
<body>
<table width=100% border=1>
<tr>
<td colspan=3>Header</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Menu column<br> "br" goes to the next line.</td>
<td>Content Column</td>
<td>Quick links column</td>
<tr>
<td colspan=3>Footer</td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>
If you don't want 3 columns, but 2, then use colspan=2, and take out the last <tr> </tr> tags and everything inside of it.