Website Design... moving up from FreeWebs

[Guitardude324]

So, I have a band, and a mobile recording business that I'm wanting to really make some nice websites for. I've done the FreeWebs thing and all that 'free website design' crap.

I want something that I have more control over, to make a true website, from scratch basically. Problem is, I don't have a couple hundred bucks to spend on DreamWeaver or something...I also don't know much about web design and software.

So basically what I need is, a fairly straight forward, easy to learn, and cheap way to gain at least a little more control over my web designs...a definite step up from FreeWebs.

Also, if it makes any difference, I'm on a Mac.

Any suggestions?

Thanks

[Guitardude324]

What I'd really love to do is make a great looking page in photoshop, then use a software to add buttons and links and the html code.

I guess Dreamweaver had a $100 educational version out a few years back, can't find anything like that that's current though...any help!?

Thanks

Learn HTML and you won't need any program.

I design all my sites in Photoshop first then chop it up into separate images to be used in the webpage. You don't want your webpage to be just one big image, you want to use as little images as possible.

Here's the site I learned HTML from:
http://www.w3schools.com/html/

After you learn HTML, then learn CSS. It might look like a lot to learn, but the more practice designs you make, the quicker you'll learn it.

This is really the only way to learn. I struggled starting with Microsoft FrontPage, and when there was something in the design that the program couldn't do, I was stuck. The only way is to learn HTML.