Everyone I know tht used serif, came back to me asking how they can fix the code...

Frontpage is no longer being developed by MS, it's being replaced by a better product called Expression Web Designer.  If you visit microsoft.com you may still be able to download the free beta.  EWD will replace frontpage next year, and it is better,  and they've cleaned up their code.

on the free side, if your host is using CPanel for site admin tools, you'll have Fantastico.  with that, you only have to click and install.  they include out of the box blogs, forums, galleries, shopping carts and stuff. 

Of course, there's no replacement for learning a couple of scripting languages as you go -- remember knowledge is power!... and if you're gonna build it all by yourself, you may want to learn at least the minimum amount of scripting -- html and css as mentioned above.

Serif? Save  your money.  It will only get you so far, then you'll be right back to square one - learning the scripts..., and it has proprietary stuff in it just like frontpage.  It also has a very inelegant way of writing code, which might give you problems later on as browsers upgrade. 

Consider this also, IE7 is in it's third prerelease version, so it's coming soon enough.  Guess what -- stuff that viewed okay in IE6 may not view so well in IE 7 -- that's because IE 7 will be a web-standards compatible browser, so no more designing pages that work in IE6, you have to design pages that work period... so Serif is out..  cheap is not always best when it comes to software, as you've probably experienced.