[texanpenguin]

Firstly, no offence I'd steer clear of calling yourself a "website designer" without a working understanding of how to design a web-site. It is a misrepresentation of your own ability (even if you're a phenomenal conceptual designer), which could land you in some hot water with clients.

Secondly, the tools you choose to make a web-site with are many and varied. You can make a text-based (or strictly layout based) web-site purely in a text-editing tool such as TextEdit or SubEthaEdit. I use a program called "Tag" for this purpose, since it fills in some of the code as you go.
If you need images, you can make them in Photoshop (or any other photo manipulation tool, such as The GIMP).

Photoshop is bundled with a program explicitly designed for producing images for the web, called "ImageReady". Consult the program's manual for instructions on using the software (if you're familiar with Photoshop, it shouldn't be any sweat at all).

Many people who are not comfortable with coding sites by hand use tools such as Macromedia Dreamweaver and Adobe GoLive. Personally, I hate both of these programs since they encourage the designer to develop web-pages to archaic standards (though they can be used effectively if you so desire).


InDesign is a print layout program designed to compete with QuarkXPress. It is not designed to do web layouts (though, I hear, it *can* be used for this purpose. I don't use InDesign personally).

Fireworks is a tool designed to compete (in a round-about way) with Photoshop and Illustrator. It is good for developing web images too.



I would suggest purchasing a web-design book from any good book store and going through the process of designing and producing web-pages. It's rewarding, but not simple (if done properly).