Website software advice for an ametuer

[genealogybuff]

Hello:
Is there a web design software that is user friendly for non professionals? A thousand years ago I played around with coding, and built my own but I don't have the free time to get my skills increased. Also since this is a 0 revenue generating venture at this point I am not looking for professional web design services.

For personal use I switched to Mac about 6 months ago. Currently I am using Iweb and Yahoo small business services for a very basic website. Publishing my site from IWeb to the host isn't really a clean process and a minor update takes too long for my limited skills. I tried cyber duck and it worked for the initial load but hasn't since.

I don't need an entire e-commerce site, mine is really just a hobby I would eventually like to grow to a business. I am willing to purchase a better software, or use a more mac friendly hosting service or both.

My goal is to have a web page with a front page, an about me, and a blog that I update a couple of times a month. Ideally I would like to somehow connect with Twitter and facebook, but that is really secondary. I'd like to promote it eventually but not a necessity at this point.

Is there any software out there that I can build this very basic scenario and publish directly to the host easily? It doesn't have to be free but user friendly is key
Thanks in advance

[Arganos0]

Get Joomla or some other commonly used CMS and buy a template for 25-50 euros. Some of these templates can actually be very nice. Or find a high school/college student who can build you a basic website for 100-200 euros.

[Hermes Monster]

If you want to splash the cash, Adobe Dreamweaver is very good for what you're looking for - it has a friendly gui that will do most of the work/design for you and you can also hand code if you wish

If you want something free, I use apatana, it's a coding app, but pretty user friendly and has some nice tools

[FourCandles]

Three reasonably priced alternatives to iWeb - relatively simple Mac applications designed to build websites:

Rapidweaver
Sandvox
Freeway (Express and Pro)

Three of the most popular free and open source CMS (content management systems), which run on your web host's server and allow for web site creation using free or paid-for templates:

WordPress
Joomla!
Drupal

[Lisa-noob]

I am testing several online builders and some of them are quite easy. I am also new to this field but seems like it's working even for me.
As I understood you're looking for a personal page - please, take a look http://www.templatemonster.com/turnkey-websites-2-0.php.
I have not decided yet but I will probably go for one of these templates.

[gfroyle]

Originally Posted by Arganos0

Get Joomla or some other commonly used CMS and buy a template for 25-50 euros. Some of these templates can actually be very nice. Or find a high school/college student who can build you a basic website for 100-200 euros.

Hmm, I wouldn't put Joomla (or Drupal etc) into the "friendly for non-professionals" category!

Steep learning curve, complicated installation requiring root access, database installation and setup, arcane apache configuration if you want URLs nicer than blah.blah?id=459 etc.

[notjustjay]

Wordpress, hosted on your own domain.

Easy to configure, easy to maintain, and it'll do everything you listed.