I personally use dreamweaver to build websites. Although I do it professionally.. sooooooo might not be up your alley?

It's a pretty easy program to figure out on your own, if you know HTML & other coding for web language. It just makes it alot quicker & easier than coding by hand (which I have to do at work...)

Photoshop (or other image editor) is pretty important for logo/layout/etc. Gimp is free, offers alot that Photoshop does.. but does not offer it as cleanly, or in depth.

One example of a site I built via photoshop & dreamweaver: www.flashforwardphotography.com