what is the best software to build websites with? baring in mind that i don't have knowledge of php, mysl or any computer language really.
is Dreamweaver CS3 any good? i am not looking to add lots of flash, maybe a flash menu, but the rest be fairly basic, a simple website with about 10 pages, attached to it a gallery, and a forum.
Ive installed MG2 (php script) for the gallery and phpbb3 for the forums but i need to know how to build the actual site
I have a design i made in photoshop and i know how to export that as html.

Anyone got any advice for me? non sarcastic advice that is....

I recently build a site using the free Joomla system, its easy to setup and simple to manage day to day. I'm not sure about the forum bit, but i'm sure there is an attachment for it.

Just google "Joomla" if you want to take a look
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yeah you can, i actually prefer to sitting there doing all the code and stuff
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cheers for that tip chet, you have just single handedly revolutionized my new project, downloaded loads of templates as well hehe

cheers

no worries mate, choosing the template is that hardest bit lol.


If your really brave you could make one yourself!
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Depending on who your hosting is with you'll have loads of one-click install Content Management Systems like Joomla at your disposal.

Although Joomla is very powerful, it is a little more difficult to get to grips with if you're a novice than some others you might have in your control panel. Certainly, for ease of use and a less steep learning curve, Wordpress is a good option too, and is a lot easier to customise visually as well (not to mention a wealth of plugins that will make it do almost anything you want it too, including galleries and forums that you can build into Wordpress).

I prefer to build sites from scratch myself, but have actually used Wordpress as the basis of quite large and complicated sites, especially when I know the client wants to update their site themslef and has limited coding knowledge.

Incidentally, even using a CMS like one of these, a web design application is still very useful. I do a lot of hand coding in Notepad, but also use Dreamweaver (PM me if you want any software ). NVU is a free (open source) web design application that is also quite good and easy to get to grips with - http://nvudev.com/download.php Kompozer is a bug free distribution of NVU, although I haven't used it, so can't comment on it other than to say it is also free - http://www.kompozer.net

I agree with darkhorse. NVU is decent and its free. It's not bloated to the point where you need a college degree to get it working yet maintains full functionality of the things that would need.

about a week ago i started a website with my friend

mysite:
http://e7-anime.freehostia.com/

hoster:
http://freehostia.com/

i would suggest using phpbb for a forum really easy to set up and use a mix of hnadcoding and dreamweaver 8 to make the actual site, my site is just a temp site untill i can properly code a site that does not take 5 minutes to recode a design table i made the dreamweaver, if you need help with hand coding use this site it is great for beginners like yourself! http://www.w3schools.com/

hey costa

you should fine some links here

http://www.joomla.org/content/view/4273/50/

Your cut and paste is a well favoured one of mine!
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Back in the old days, meaning pre XML and CCS, we used to find a nice page we liked and steal it. You can still do that but getting all the scripts that are in sue today is going to be a little tough and that means trolling through possibly thousands of lines of code to find them all.

That is what made me give up as i was using good old notepad to edit. Now everything is built for us by machines.

try hand coding with Vim or notepad++ it will make it alot easier to code and it makes it all nice and neat