i'm thinking of teaching myself to make a simple website.
i've mad some in the past but it was using HTML code and it was huge pain in my butt.

i have GoLIve on my computer, should i try learning that or is there a better and easier program?

I've always used the Macromedia stuff (Dreamweaver, Flash) which do fine for the simple run-of-the-mill stuff. Dreamweaver throws in a bunch of garbage code that can use some cleaning up to help things run a little better, but I think that's the same with most WYSIWYG software.

Never used GoLive, so no help there. But if it works seamlessly with Photoshop and Illustrator, that may be the route to go.

I've done websites at a couple of places and DreamWeaver has been close to the standard in recent years. GoLive is just starting to gain some ground though. Personally, I really like it...helps that you can get a great package deal on a bundle of software from Adobe with GoLive, Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, etc...

If you are looking to get into web design as an occupation, you should probably become familiar with both. If you are just looking to create a web site for yourself, whichever you prefer will work just fine. I'm working on a site for a friend right now and am going with InDesign.

i use InDesign all the time, i can use that to make webpages?

at this point i'm just going to make websites for me and maybe VERY rarely for clients.

oops...meant GoLive

which, I'd just go with were I you as long as you've already got it on your computer. And, it is easy to work together with the other Adobe programs that you are probably already familiar with.

i love adobe products, so maybe i'll try and learn GoLive

I'm a nerd so I usually code from scratch, but Dreamweaver is the app I use along with the hard-coding.

i've always just used a regular text editor. working directly with it helped reinforce how to code it. plus, as said earlier, a lot of GL IDEs introduce a lot of extraneous code & doesn't format code the way i like.

i created my fishtick site from writing code (and borrowing code)

but there are so many things that go wrong that i can't figure out and i'd rather learn to create visually and not have to "think" so much.

Learn CSS so you can teach me.

'

teach me what CSS means, and maybe we'll talk.

cascading style sheets
really helps limit extraneous code and helps set the theme/tone for all subsequent pages in a site.

I can barely fathom anyone writing complex sites using WYSIWYG editors, since what you mean is usually NOT what you get, although maybe that's just because I've never worked very hard to learn them, or because I tried older, less capable iterations.

If you do want to learn the basics of writing web code (HTML, DHTML, CSS, Javascript), check out htmlgoodies.com and it's brethren. Very good, simple tutorials on how to write dynamic web pages.

i use and like go-live and flash

used to use dreamweaver
but all my images were done in adobe programs... so its handy

True. I remember about 7 years ago, I took an html class, and we were coding in NotePad. I think having the knowledge of what the tags truly mean and how they work is helpful when using a WYSIWIG editor. The apps have gotten better with age (I could never stomach Front Page), but still klugey at times.

I think for people like jewels, who have a more graphics/visual background than I do, a WYSIWIG would be helpful for page layout. But for me, it was always easier to design in another app, like Photoshop or what have you, and then break it apart into individual elements for easier html coding.

The latest Dreamweaver is pretty clean when it comes to html, but I can't imagine it'll ever get to the point where it won't be handy to know html to tweak things here and there. I still have to do things in tables manually because it just doesn't seem to want to do them right. I know, I know, I should be using CSS for positioning, but I'll get in line behind Jewels and Fu - that CSS positioning crap messes with my head.

However, I hardly even do websites anymore - my team just converts shitty Word documents to shitty html. It blows, but it's easy and pays way too well for what we have to do. Dreamweaver's find-n-replace function is a life-saver (we have to strip out all of Word's stupid crap coding and leave behind the simple html. It's a mess.) I think I'd lose my mind if I had to hand-code entire websites day in, day out after 7 years or so of dedicated Dreamweavering of sites.

you guys seem to know what you are talking about, please design and make my site.

pay me.

They've gotten WAY better then their early incarnations. The newer versions of Dreamweaver have the site manager that basically keeps watch over your entire project, so if you make a change to one common element it can change it throughout the entire site. I don't get much of a chance to make use of it, but the few times I have it was a real benefit - the kind of thing that made me think "Why would I ever bother with hand-coding again?" Plus you can tie it into that Breeze program (I think that's the one) so that your entire team is grouped together and everyone is seeing everyone else's changes and stuff. Though I wonder what's going to happen to stuff like that now that Macromedia's been swallowed whole by Adobe. You know Flash and Dreamweaver are safe, but what about the lesser known programs?