One of the best features of the web is how easy it is to learn the basic skills needed to produce web pages. Without help, however, it can still be a bit daunting.
Luckily, help is available!
We'll start off with an excellent alternative to those ludicrously expensive web-authoring packages. Web pages are simply text files. All you need to produce one is a text editor. Notepad will do at a pinch, but here is a link to a shareware text editor with lots of handy features to make your life easier.
If you can afford something more sophisticated, here is a link to the best (in my humble opinion) dedicated HTML editor around.
Now for some help in actually learning and using HTML. The following resources are largely aimed at the beginner, but even the more experienced among you will probably find something useful in this lot!