website making

[big mean bunny]

Ok I am after making a website for the golf society I run. Its just needs to be a basic site that gets the info across. However can anyone give me a starting point or recommend either a few sites or books to read, I am in no rush.

Technical details about me:
I understand the basics of html as I did it a few years ago.
I can use fireworks fairly well, and have Dreamweaver MX 2004 (slightly odd education version) although have only had a quick look at it this weekend.
I manage my schools website using Joomla, although its mainly web authoring and I rarely do anything complicated (which is what joomla is meant for)


basically I ain't scared of having to read or get my head round some potentially tricky stuff, to be honest it would be good for my work if I could get a better understanding of how websites/vle and portals work. Is Dreamweaver a good starting point? what I could see of it the templates all looked a bit dry and bland.

[Guinnes1981]

I've been teaching myself HTML and CSS for the last year now, i'd highly recommend not using Dreamweaver, and learning the hard code route. www.htmldog.com is an excellent starting point, teaching best practice coding methods and the book is excellent.

[big mean bunny]

Guiness that book looks good, whats the outcome of the tutorials though? can you build your website as you go using them? or are they just to teach you the practises? either way I like the look of it. The ones I had a flip through in waterstones looked a bit too much deep end stuff straight from the off.

[Guinnes1981]

Can't remember there being any tutorials as such, i just read through it, typing all the code out as notes which i then used to make my first website with relatively no hassle. The books also excellent for reference - hasn't left my desk since i bought it!