Free or almost free web design software.

The links below are probably going to be more interesting to other web designers and do-it-yourselfers rather than people who want to get a website made for them.

Firefox . . . Site Promotion . . . Web Design Tools . . . Free Software . . . Miscellaneous

Firefox Web Browser

Firefox. If you don't use this browser yet, do yourself and the internet a favor and download it. Has tabbed browsing, much better security than Microsoft's browser, great support for standards, and a killer "Find" feature. For Windows, Mac, Linux and more.
Greasemonkey. Firefox extension that lets you add your own or third-party DHTML/JavaScript to any web page.
EditCSS. Firefox extension that lets you modify the style sheet of the pages you're viewing in real time. Great for making text that's hard to read a little easier to read.

Site Promotion

The internet search engine database has lots of articles about search engine optimization (SEO), but more importantly, it has a list of more search engines and directories than you could ever possibly want to know about (and submit your site to).
Nichebot can help you figure out what keyphrases to optimize your pages for. It shows how many times a phrase got searched for, in how many pages it appears, and more.
Search engine keyword tracker and keyword ranking tool by Digital Point lets you see how well your pages are ranking over time. There's also access to information on search term popularity.
The Google toolbar for Internet Explorer or the Firefox/Mozilla pagerank plugin are both useful for determining whether a potential link exchange is a good idea. For example, if someone offers to trade a link with you from a page with a rank of zero, you may want to wait a while before doing it in case their zero came from their page being banned.
Adwords is a Google program that allows you to place small text ads in their search listings. It's also known as pay-per-click (PPC). In addition to allowing you to pay for site visitors, it's also very useful for researching search term popularity.

Web Design Tools

Don't pay $35 a year for domain name registration. Moniker.com will do it for $10 or less.
You can pay as much as you like for stock photos. Or get them for free from: Morgue File, Geek Philosopher, Stock Exchange, or Pixel Perfect Digital.
Make your own blog-type or brochure-type website without knowing any HTML or programming! Use the WordPress content management system (CMS). It's extremely easy to set up and use. It helps if you know PHP, HTML and CSS if you want to personalize it to any great degree.
If choosing color combinations is something you would enjoy, check out the Color Scheme Generator. Click on a color in the color wheel, then try out the different buttons like Contrast, Triad, Pastel, etc. If you find a color scheme you like, to make things easier for your designer be sure to write down the "hex numbers" for each color listed at the top right of the screen. These look like #FF6699, #B34701A, etc. The Color Schemer is a similar tool but lets you see more colors at once.

Free Computer Software

All of the links in this section represent the best of the free software that I've found in over six years of reading recommendations, browsing, and trying things out. I actually use many of these on a regular basis.

Nvu lets you make text and other changes to your website yourself. It's as easy to use as a word processor. You can also use it to build websites from scratch, assuming you have the knowledge. It's built on the Mozilla Composer code base. Windows, Mac OS X, Linux.
IrfanView. Image viewing, slideshows, resizing, optimizing. Windows.
The Gimp. Full blown image editor. Almost as powerful (and complicated) as Photoshop. Windows, Mac OS X (using X11), Linux, Unix.
AVG anti-virus. Windows.
Zone Alarm firewall. Windows.
Spybot S&D anti-spyware. Windows.
Cyberduck FTP and SFTP. Mac OS X.
Timebox time-tracking software. Windows and Mac OS X.
YourSQL. MySQL database creation, editing, import/export. Mac OS X.
Open Office. A Microsoft Office replacement that can read and write in native Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint formats. Can also create PDFs. Windows, Mac OS X (using X11--don't worry, it's a snap to install), Linux, Unix.
Xenu. Finds broken links and orphan files. Useful for larger sites. About the only thing I use Windows for these days. Windows.

Miscellaneous

Sitepoint is an online community of aspiring and established web designers, programmers and marketers. Tons of useful articles, blogs, books for sale, and an extremely helpful forum. Technologically forward-looking yet grounded in the present.
CSS Zen Garden. Lots of beautiful visual designs showing off the versatility of designing with style sheets instead of tables. It's the wave of the present.
Frog Family Standards. A repository of high-end standards-based design samples. This site makes me feel very humble.

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