Hi David,
my 10c worth <img src=../images/dmxzone/forum/icon_smile.gif border=0 align=middle>
I think there are two ways to go about websites in general, depending on the result you want and your expertise/how much you want to learn and do yourself.
You can develop the site yourself, with something like dreamweaver and css, you will get a good site, BUT you will have to learn how to do it which means learning how to use the software and styles. The amount of learning you need to do is quite substantial, so you might want to think about whether or not that's your core business and how much effort you can afford to put into it. I have a 'hobby site' that I keep going back to when time permits and it's coming along very slowly.
Another way to approach this would be with a content management system - that is a software system that stores all the information about the pages in a database, then generates the pages as they are needed. It also means quite a bit of learning, but once it's set up and running you can add things very easily.
Recently I have moved a few of my sites over - the ones where the client was always wanting small updates to a site that was largely static, now the client does their own updates without any input from me. That it much better as there are no misunderstandings.
For information I used Joomla as the content management system after an extensive evaluation of many - you'll find lots of them and other people will have different opinions about which is best. Have a look at
www.listentothepeople.co.uk - not so much the content but the presentation etc, that's all generated out of a database by Joomla. BTW Joomla is open source, so it's free, but you might need templates for page layouts, I buy them at around $40US - I can give you the place if interested.
Hope that helps
