I am reqired to have a webpage and don't know how to go about creating a website. How would I go about this and is there any software that will help?
If you are interested in creating your own site, Google, Yahoo, among others, have free templates available and charge a small fee for hosting your site. These are somewhat limited but will give you an introduction to developing a site.
You may wish to also look into Wordpress.com if you need an interactive blog site.
If these prove to be too time consuming or if you need more functionality than what the templates of the "free" versions mentioned provide, you may want to look into having a professional site created. Many designers have reasonable prices for a one to three page site.
As far as development software, look into Adobe Dreamweaver or Micrsoft's most recent site building software (Frontpage or whatever they named their latest version).
Good luck!
Before you think about the design of your website, obviously think about the goals and what you expect your website to do for you. Are you looking to sell something, to pass on information, or simply looking to build brand recognition?
In addition you need to consider how people will find your website once it has been built. Too many people spend a lot of money building a great looking website and have no idea how search engines pick up the website addresses. Believe it or not, a lot of people think that once their site has been built that it will automatically appear on page 1 of Google for all their selected keywords.
Once you have answered both of the above questions, only then should you consider layout and design.
You have two choices? Do it yourself or pay an expert. If you have no coding experience you can still use a template and make changes to those. They are fairly simple to use, and a lot of hosting companies offer them for free with a hosting package. The advantage of doing it this way is that you will save money. The disadvantage is that you may not end up with exactly what you want, and you may need to forego some features you might want if the template doesn't include those.
If you decide to work with a website designer, then, if you choose a good one, you could and should end up with exactly what you want. A good designer should be able to design from scratch, based on the features you want, and the overall goal of the website.
Make sure, if you decide to work with a designer, that you get a firm price in writing, and get them to state exactly what they will do for the price. Also ask if there are any additional costs not included in the quoted price e.g. website hosting, the cost of an SSL certificate (if you have an ecommerce site), etc.
Also investigate the cost of SEO before proceeding with building a website. Your finished website will need to be found on the major search engines for it to help make your business successful.