You will need to learni PS, Dreamwaver, flash 8 <<< this are just some of things u will need to learn to build a site then there are other add ons
You don't need to learn DreamWeaver - many including myself don't use it for whatever reason and get our hands dirty with HTML by hand. Personally I despise DreamWeaver. You also don't need to learn Flash - this is one of those extra optionals.
You defiantly don't need to learn flash, Dreamweaver is handy if you aren't too sharp with HTML. PHP is a bonus but most don't need it. To be honest you can get by with free wordpress blogs
I've started with notepad (EditPlus is more powerfull). You need to know html/css.You can start from here : http://www.w3schools.com/html/DEFAULT.asp If you have photoshop use/learn it if not you can use a free tool like gimp. Flash is good for animations/menus/banners etc but is not a must. Dreamweaver is a wysiwyg tool and I don't recommend this type of tools.
basically if you are a newbie, you should try those software which are newbie-friendly.. I mean free, easy and just a little bit downgrade than the great webbuilder-related software.. Plus many of the software today are having WYSIWYG feature.. No need to study all those html coding and etc.. instead of using ..., why not try this... >> Dreamweaver - Nvu >> Photoshop - GIMP >> Flash -- Swish Do a little search on it.. Download and try it.. It's totally free.. Plus - try to take a look at this.. www.blinkweb.com.. It's awesome!!
Try getting a good domain and then some hosting package. After that you can use simple CMS like Wordpress / Joomla
Okay, there hasn't been a lot of good advice here yet. To make a website you need to know HTML and CSS. You don't need any programs or spend any money - it's a skilled trade not a product. I learned how to make websites slowly, on my own in highschool using the W3Schools website, which is still the best resource for learning HTML and CSS. To make your job easier web designers often use a Syntax highlighting editor, which means when you open an HTML document it will colour the different types of commands to help you better be able to see the code layout. Dreamweaver from Adobe, is a good example and one of the most popular, but for what you're doing editing code, Eclipse from IBM will do the same, even an arguably better job, and for free. Also look into Notepad++ if you're a windows user, or TextMate if you're a mac user. Aptana Studio is a wonderful Eclipse-based free editor that I use in addition to dreamweaver because I like how it works. Next you need some graphics. Graphics really augment the experience, and clever use of images in your layout can really help you out. Some people who call themselves web designers use Photoshop to make layouts, but Photoshop was never designed to do that task. Photoshop is a photographic editing and manipulation program. Adobe did however make a program specifically for making web graphics, and it's cheaper than Photoshop and called Adobe Fireworks and I highly, highly recommend it if you want an Adobe program for web design. However, I also use the GIMP, which is a free image editor, and I use Inkscape which is another free editor (vector-based drawing). Lastly, starting out from scratch might be necessary to under just the basics, but you can always get a site that already exists and tinker around with it. I learned through trial and error and I played around with free templates I found at OSWD.org . Now, you can also go get a wordpress website and play with it as you feel comfortable, but because it's a piece of Blog software it's easy to use, easy to customize and you can do as much as you feel comfortable with. Good luck, it's an exciting hobby or job to have, and it's easy enough for a kid to learn, but big enough that no person can ever master every angle of it. It is full of creative problem solving and *can* be very fulfilling to do. I wish you well on your journey, and please, before you spend any money, try the free alternatives - they are all you need to do it professionally and you may never desire to purchase any expensive software!
first steps: 1) Get the idea for a website 2) Plan the outline of the website 3) Get the content for the website 4) Get webhosting & domain name 5) Program the website (either plain html - or dynamical with php/css) 6) Put it up 7) get links 8) build more content ...