What are the three best website creation programs?

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I got a big school project where we have to do a website about bicycle. Problem is that I suck at website making and I need to find three good website creating programs along with their pros and cons. Could anybody with knowledge in that matter point me to some good website programs along with their major pros and cons? (Note that this is all a personal opinion and I don't wish to create a ''wich one is best'' flame war, I just need help.) Thanks in advance to everybody.

I have some basic knowledge about websites. I've made a couple of them, but I don't work in that field. So I'll just list the 6 way to make a website that I know.

1. Notepad:
This is the most basic.

Pros:
- It's free and everyone has it if their operating system is Windows.
Cons:
- You have to be able to write HTML yourself, or be able to read it well enough to take the parts you need from another website.

2. DreamWeaver
This is from Adobe I think.. It has several views, one is code, one is graphical and one is those two combined. So I suppose the graphical view would work best for you?
I've never used the graphical view myself though, so I'm a bit at a loss at how much use this is for you.

Pros:
- Used by professionals, so it includes pretty much everything (or, I think it does).
- If I remember correctly, it was fairly intuitive to use.
Cons:
- It's very expensive.
- There is a trial version without any features getting locked, but it only works for 30 days.

3. Flash
This mostly has a graphics side with some minimal coding. It works entirely with frames. So you can make some websites with stuff like "if you click this, go to frame 2", after which you put another page worth of info in frame 2.
It's mainly used for movies, hence why frames are used.

Pros:
- Can look pretty decent, depending on how much work you put into it.
- You can make movies with it.
Cons:
- It's not very intuitive to use at first.
- The coding that you have to do isn't in HTML, if I remember correctly.
- I don't recommend drawing things yourself on the computer, takes forever without a tablet. That is, if you want it to look good. Decent alternative here is drawing on paper, scanning that, and editing it in Photoshop (expensive / limited trial) or paint (free).

4. Microsoft Publisher (not sure about the name)
I was told that this was a program you could make websites with. Saw the name once, never used it. I'm not even sure if that still exists.

5. Microsoft Word
It's possible to save documents as a .html file. That way you could make things in Word, and save it as .html. If it'll work as I think it should, then that'll make all the HTML code. I'm not sure how the linking from one page to another would go though.. Probably with hyperlinks, which I'm not sure how to do.

6. Content Management System
This is where someone else made a user interface, in which you can insert text and pictures. The interface usually is similar to Microsoft Word.

Pros:
- Very intuitive to use
- Sometimes comes with it when you pay for an URL and storage space.
Cons:
- This might be cheating if your assignment included "You have to make the website yourself".
- Storage usually costs money. It is possible to get a free URL and free data storage, but that usually comes with a pretty low bandwith limit. This means that you can only have say.. 10 MB of data going from your website to visitors per month. If you go over 10 MB / month, your website will be taken down for the remainder of that month.

If you have any more questions, feel free to ask.

To clarify: do you have to find three web site creation programs as part of the assignment, or just make a web page?

Hand coding usually makes the best web sites in terms of the HTML code actually being valid code according to what standards exist. There are other text editors besides Notepad that are better for web site creation. Notepad++ is one that is free. You would need to learn some HTML, but it's not hard. Basically you label the parts of the page, and nest things (boxes inside boxes).
<html>
<head>metadata such as page title and description</head>
<body>main content</body>
</html>

The <head></head> tags contain things like the <title>Title of the page that shows at top of the browser</title> and other metadata.

Within the <body></body> tags use <h1>header</h1> tag for the title of the page that displays on the part you read (put the title of the page between the <h1> and the closing tag </h1>. If there are subsections use <h2>subsection title</h2>, and so on down if there are more <h3>, <h4>.

For the content itself you would use <div> for generic divisions or <p> for paragraphs. Don't forget to put the closing tags for each section (those would be </div> and </p> respectively). There are other tags for inserting images and such, and there are ways to make columns too depending how fancy you want to get. There are many good HTML resources and tutorials out there. The ones that stick to valid standards are the better ones, such as w3.org


So a slightly more complicated form of a basic HTML page might look like:
<html>
<head><title>title of page to display at top of browser</title></head>
<body>
<h1>title of page that displays on the page</h1>
<h2>title of first subsection</h2><p>paragraph of information</p>
<h2>title of next subsection</h2><p>paragraph of information</p>
<div><img src="URL of image">maybe a picture here</img></div>
</body>
</html>

Microsoft Word may have the option to save pages as HTML, but their HTML code is bloated, full of errors and proprietary code that nobody else recognizes.

It might be easiest to use Wordpress or some other content management system as the other poster suggested, if the teacher allows it. You can choose what template, colors, etc. to use, but all the coding is already done for you.

Feel free to look at the source code of the pages of my web site. All my web code validates to the "strict" standard according to w3c. I even have a section of my web site about my bicycle The Minstrel Cycle.

Good luck and have fun.

I wanted to add that there are some websites that explain how to code in HTML. They guide you every step of the way. They explain what each code does, and what possible variables do.
It works a little bit like Wikipedia, without the "everyone can edit pages" bit. Which means that you can just search those websites for "image" and that'll forward you to the page where they explain how to insert images.

The following list is similar to what the first responder answered, but has my opinions about the importance of valid code thrown in.

The pros of using a text editor such as Notepad or Notepad++ are that the only bloated code in there will be what you put in (if you do). The cons of using a text editor is that you need to learn HTML (the web code itself) and CSS (style sheets, for formatting and positioning the content).

The pros of using a program such as Dreamweaver are that it does much of the coding for you. The cons include its price (expensive) and that it might introduce some bloated or bogus code (but not nearly as bad as Microsoft Word).

The pros of using Microsoft Word are that you just position things on the page until they look good to you, and it can save that page as an HTML file. The cons are again the expense if you don't already have it installed, and much worse than the cost in my opinion is the fact that Microsoft Word does a very poor job of writing HTML code. The code it spits out is extremely verbose (bloated) and it has many errors and much code that only Microsoft recognizes and nobody else does. So the page it produces might render okay if you're using Microsoft Internet Explorer as your browser (or might not), but might have trouble rendering properly in any other browser such as Firefox.

The pros of using a content management system such as Wordpress are that it is easy to use. Also, it is FREE! The cons are that unless you are good at writing and formatting code yourself you are limited to what templates they offer (but there are many to choose from).

If you do want to write code yourself, or even if you don't but want to check the code other programs produce to see if they validate to w3 standards, visit the World Wide Web Consortium web site. There are validators on that web site to check any web page or you can paste the text in and check it that way. They also describe every tag of HTML and have tutorials on how to use them. Another good site for learning how to code the right way is HTML Dog.

If you have troubles or questions, there are news groups devoted to HTML and CSS too. I highly recommend those that begin with "comp.infosystems.www.authoring" as part of the group name. Over the years they have helped me a lot with my web site. Some of these groups are low activity so you might have to wait a day or two for an answer. Also, they won't do the work for you. But, if you make an honest effort and have some questions usually one or more experts will tell you what you're doing right, what you're doing wrong, and how to fix it.

Learn how to set-up a CMS, a SQL database and use CSS.

Typically the best way to make a website is to learn HTML and code it yourself. For that I use a program called HTML-kit, which colour-codes the HTML.

However, these days websites and more and more being made with pre-made blog-style templates and the art of HTML coding is being replaced by graphic designers.

Sort of sad.

I use Flux and Textmate.

Why is that sad? Graphic design should be left to the graphic designers. I'm a web developer, but I hardly ever write views anymore. My company has a guy specifically for that. I could not be more happy with this arrangement, because it leaves me with more time to do real programming (writing HTML and CSS is not programming).

OP: Writing good looking, cross-browser CSS is hardly a walk in the park. Trying to learn this just for a school project would be an exercise in frustration, to say the least. If allowed, I would just use a content management system as has been suggested.

Depends on the type of web page being made. Does it only display some static information or does it display information based on what a user does? Does it need to use a data file or connect to a database?

There are many programs that help in creating web sites however knowing HTML and javascript can go a long way in getting more out of those programs.

So, 3 ways to make a web page.

Hand code using a simple text editor like Notepad++
Pros: Full control over source code and can make edits in the code without having to go through a wizard and its free.
Cons: Can be time consuming, larger files often require the search function to be used quite a bit. Larger projects can get a little out of control without reusable components.

Dreamweaver or similar development software
Pros: Lots of features especially with the CSS layouts. WYSIWYG design. Don't have to necessarily be a HTML or javascript pro to add some features. Wizard driven. Just click properties. Source code protection if sharing the development tasks.
Cons: Expensive. If you're experienced then the wizards and windows get in the way and you spend most time looking at properties and the actual code. WYSIWYG I don't like. Cuz there is always one browser which won't look right anyway.

API: Creating a webpage using an API like Coldfusion, PHP, ASP.NET, JAVA... You use another language to spit out HTML code from the server to the browser. You'll still need to use HTML.
Pros: Lots of pros. Reusability, encapsulation, dynamic web pages, lets you talk to a database...lots of stuff
Cons: Expensive depending on the language chosen. Can be slower than static HTML. Can open security risks compared to static HTML. Another language or two or three to learn.

I've done web pages for 14 years. Usually I'll use something like Dreamweaver to get the CSS layout and then use a text editor or Eclipse and code view it from then on.

Good luck.

I use these sites

http://www.quackit.com/ (very basic and easy to understand)

http://www.w3schools.com/ (better and more current website info)

and ad some cool stuff too

http://jquery.com/

I use komodo edit (free) for editing

http://www.activestate.com/komodo-edit

You can get layout ideas all over the place. Make an outline of what you want in your website and start organizing layout from there - cheers.

Vim for Unix/Linux, Crimson Editor or GVim for Windows. I've used CLI Vim on Windows 7, though it's not as good due to some factors like the 80-column limit. I never used web design programs; I consider it worthwhile to actually bother to learn HTML and CSS.