When I started doing  my homepages I worked in a 
"WYSIWYG" (what you see is what you get) program,
but I learned some more HTML and started to work in FrontPage instead.
A lot of helpful tools can be found on the internet, graphics,
 a counter, a guestbook, scripts, new fonts and other small utils. 
Here are some pages where you might find what you're looking for.