I have found a website such as html.net to be quite helpful in my quest to design an
appealing webpage. I love Dreamweaver but I can't afford it. Dreamweaver CS3 is close to $400 dollars at the most. Adobe.com has a free trial for anyone interested but I recommend coding your own website as a cheap alternative to Dreamweaver. Notepad or TextEdit is perfect for the task.
Since I am a Macintosh user and enthusiast I use TextEdit. I have made a lackluster webpage using TextEdit and the tutorials from html.net.
I look at well designed webpages to get inspiration for a well organize website. I am in the process of redesigning my website.
Here it is in its current form: http://www.geocities.com/ironqueenrkl/index.html. I admit it is terrible because I used tables to format the page a big design no-no! I have learned recently about CSS. Which I have a hard time learning.
I use html for the most part. I have no idea about xhtml though or php.