[best advice]
Spend an afternoon and learn basic html, css and if possible, a js library such as jquery. Within only a couple days, you could be hand crafting your site using one of the many popular and free text editors such as Notepad2 or Notepad++.
- HTML is used for structure and is really simple; anyone can pick it up with nothing more than a quick read.
- CSS is used for style and although it will take a long long time to master, the basics are quite easy and once you have your head around them, you'll be able to start pumping out sites while improving your knowledge/skills as you go.
- jquery can be used for many many things. Most often, you'll see it being used to rotate images, text, do animations but it can be used to parse json or xml data or even work with ajax to submit a form without refreshing a page. I recommend jquery over other libraries such as MooTools because it's by far the most popular and well documented library. I also think it's the easiest to learn, use and adapt, but that's just a personal opinion. While it'll be a long while before you're creating plugins from scratch, or even adding features to existing ones but don't let that deter you. There are tons of awesome plugins out there which only require a basic knowledge to put in.
[/best advice]
If you're dead set on using a free WYSIWYG editor, .....
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Okay, I swear that the basic version of Microsoft Expression was free to download but after taking a quick look, all I can seem to find are free versions hosted on sites like softpedia so maybe they changed it. Regardless, I'd still recommend you download one of the slightly older, but free copies of Expression Web. (Expression Web kind of replaced FrontPage but don't let that deter you as they're nothing alike.)