Suggestions for website building software?

[texbike]

I'm in the process of putting together a website for a new business venture and would love to have the collective wisdom of the forum on what website-building software packages might be the best.

The website will essentially be a landing page to talk about the mission of the business, vendor partners, contact information, upcoming events, news-worthy articles, etc. Eventually I will have an e-commerce link to the page. I would also like the ability to have an attached/associated blog, Twitter feed, etc.

Also of note, I am NOT a programmer by any means and am looking for something with a template base that is easy to use/beginner friendly. It should also be flexible with the ability to change heading fonts, backgrounds, images, etc. Free packages would be nice as well. :)

I did my first website this past week using Plesk Sitebuilder. Plesk is easy to use, but definitely lacks the flexibility needed to deliver the (more) professional quality that I'm after.

Given all of this, what website development packages would you suggest?

Thanks!

Texbike

[redir]

Wordpress would satisfy all those needs. You would want a provider designed to handle Wordpress sites and preferable have root shell access to the entire site.

[rwsaunders]

If you have a Mac, you might iWeb to be simple and straight forward.

http://www.apple.com/findouthow/web

[jmoore]

+1 on Wordpress.

I've got two sites running WP templates and one of the free templates will be easy to get up and running and up to speed on.

[texbike]

Thanks guys. My provider does support Wordpress so I may have a go with it. I'll look at iWeb as well.

Any other suggestions?

Thanks!

Texbike

[neiltron]

I will hands down recommend Virb.com (http://virb.com/features). Very, very easy to use and will integrate with Bigcartel when you want to add a shopping cart. Wordpress isn't the best platform in my opinion for what you want to do - there's a lot of blog-centric things you'll want to remove like "comments are disabled on this page" messages, for example.

[ngilbert]

I second wordpress. It's easy to use and most popular web hosts offer a simple install interface for it so you don't have to do it yourself.