There are certain things you'll need to get started. These are...

A Text Editor or WYSIWYG Program

Any text editor will do. If it can save in plain (ASCII) text, it will do. This means that anything from Microsoft Word 6.0 to the DOS Edit program to TeachText to UNIX vi will work. All it has to do is save the documents in plain, flat, unstyled ASCII-style text. A text-based HTML editor will probably work best though. Any decent FTP site, such as Jumbo will have several to choose from. The editor that this entire site was created on was Brooklyn North's HTML Assistant Pro 3. By this point, it is a little out of date, but it is a good solid program for HTML, so I see no use in getting rid of it just yet.

Your other choice is to use a WYSIWYG (or "What You See Is What You Get") program. While this presents a very simple way to do web sites, they teach nothing about HTML. If this is your style, then there are several to choose from, such as Microsoft's Front Page, Netscape Navigator Gold, or Netscape Communicator. If you're planning on using one of these, then I must ask why you are even reading this information. :)

A Web Browser

Netscape Communicator, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Lynx, NCSA Mosaic, MacWeb/WinWeb, Cello, Chimera, WebExplorer, NetCruiser, whatever. In fact, it's a good idea to keep more than one browser around for testing purposes (more about that later).

A Graphics Tool

This gets a bit trickier. Sure, you can draw pictures with no problem, but can you get them into the right format? In order to include a picture in a Web page, it needs to be in the Graphic Interchange Format (GIF) or JPEG format. Paint Shop Pro 4.12 from JASC Inc. will save indexed color files as GIF or JPG files, and there are a number of other format converters on the market. Whatever you get, make sure you can get your files into GIF or JPG.

A Web Server

Strictly speaking, this is optional. You can write Web pages in a text editor, save them to your machine's hard drive, and load the pages into your Web browser in order to see how they look. You don't even need a network connection to do this. The option to load pages from your hard drive is typically called something like "Open Local" (Mosaic) or simply "Open File" (Netscape).

However, if you plan to publish your documents so the rest of the world can benefit from them, you'll need to put them on a Web server. As long as you're using a Windows-based PC, a Macintosh, or a UNIX box, and it's connected to the Internet, you can set your machine up as a Web server. For example, the program MacHTTP will let you turn your Mac into a Web server. Check around to see if you can locate something for your platform of choice.