I know how you feel (i am the same way). I am good at programming and coding but as far as graphics go, i couldn’t make a nice looking image to save my life! Luckily for me, I have a talented sister for graphics design. I can suggest what she uses though. Adobe products are amazing for graphics design and templates. Try to get Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator and play around with them until you start to get a good feel for it. Photoshop is raster imaging and illustrator is vector imaging. they both have their advantages over each other but just play around with them to see what fits you.

you can search for available web template on internet and use those u like as a reference.

Some people prefer use CMS tools, I guess it just a matter of personal preference (like some want drive auto, and some want manual car, there is no clean cut of which is better, it’s personal choice mostly).

To layout your site, you need to learn (x)’html + css, you do not need to use tools such as dreamweaver, all you really need is some text-editor. See also: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=Ai7sQCv2ekHo4t.nN17tDDDsy6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20080721140047AAZH38t&show=7#profile-info-k4kHfXcmaa

You should always write valid code, to the degree possible. Usuallu a few intended errors doesn’t matter, but you should avoid fetal mistakes such as not including a valid doctype.
You can validate your pages using:
http://validator.w3.org/... – General validator, I.E. (X)’html
http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validat... – CSS Validator

As for recommended tools the lightweight editors will be to prefer. I simply suggest using notepad++ in bigger projects, and a standard editor like notepad in windows for small projects. Notepad++ has features like syntax highlighting and tapped editing, get it here: http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm

For CSS there would be tools like Topstyle, which might be of some use. But i must admit that i’ve never really used such tools seriously, see: http://www.newsgator.com/individuals/topstyle/default.aspx

The below collection of links may also be of interest.
http://www.brugbart.com/Tutorials/17/ – HTML 4.01 Tutorial
http://www.brugbart.com/Tutorials/18/ – CSS Tutorial
http://www.brugbart.com/Tutorials/21/ – PHP Tutorial

http://www.w3schools.com – Tutorials/References
http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Guide/ – Dave Raggett’s Introduction to HTML
http://www.w3.org/Style/Examples/011/firstcss/ – Starting with HTML + CSS
http://www.phpfreaks.com/ – PHP Tutorials/Forum Etc

If you already have programming experience, you won’t have a hard time learning php, the principles are the same. Don’t forget about the reference at http://www.php.net/

Making a website look good is not as important as making it usable to your visitors, to many start building a site in flash, only to end up driving away their visitors, and later discover that search engines have a hard time indexing their sites.