The first website I built was with Xsara. Have a look at the latest version 3 and see what you think.
It depends what you want to do with the site. If you want loads of flash and pyrotechnics on your site then you will need to get stuck into some code work. There are loads of apps that make it so you dont need to learn about HTML but I think that at least knowing a bit about it is better than nothing at all.