Do It
Yourself Websites
There is a wide array of software packages out there proclaiming to let you design your own website, some will tell you that you're site will be put together, "in minutes". Be careful. I have yet to see a package that will have your site up in just minutes. This may be true after you spend "hours" figuring out how the software works.
These programs are building html (or hypertext mark-up language) in the background and you'll therefore run across the claim "no programming required". The problem with this is that sometimes these programs aren't as smart as they think they are and will confuse themselves. When this happens, you may need to "pop the hood" and make some manual adjustments to the html yourself.
In a rather small nutshell, there are two categories these software programs will fall into: web page design, and web site design. Remember, a website is a comprised of related webpages.
In addition to a webpage creation program, you'll be needing some amount of graphics. There are many "web ready" image libraries out there to use for free or purchase. However, if you are in need of some unique images for your website and you already have these, you'll be needing to have these digitized via a scanner and then compressed for the web. Too many people make the mistake of thinking they can just scan an image and put it up on the web. This is possible, but it will usually result in a very long download.
All that said, it is possible to have a "do it yourself" website. It's just not always as quick and inexpensive as the packaging will lead you to believe.