Thanks for all the great advice everyone.
One more question:
Both my father-in-laws want me to design websites for them...(they both run framing business in the same town....we won't get into that)
Anyway, they both want essentially the same thing: a website on which they can put their current inventory and well it, such as pictures and such. The problem is, the nature of the business is such that you would always have to update the pictures of the stuff he's selling. What's the best way to run such a time demanding website. How do you or other people run theirs?
One suggestion I had from someone is: to eliminate me from the situation after I design it, you put links to the Facebook page and then the person can update the Facebook page with inventory.
I don't know if this is clever or ameteur.

It's all going to depend on what your going to be able to do. You could go the Facebook route or you could give Coffeecup's S-Drive Streams a run. The next thing would be to put a form for them to upload the images then you write a custom php script to display them.

Or, if you don't know how to make a custom php script, there is a thing called Snippetmaster, which will turn any site into something more like a CMS. The clients can be given various permissions: edit content, upload images etc.

Can't remember if your using VSD or HTML editor, but what i do with my VSD websites is

Designed on my VSD program on my pc

Make live a new CC account for each privately owned website, and get the owner to buy a copy of VSD and their URL through CC total £50 or £60

Upload to their account, and then download VSD onto their PC from THEIR CC account (enter email address and password for their account into VSD ftp )

Transfer my website folder onto their desctop (same as it is on mine) with all the content inside

Now they can open VSD open the .vnu file and edit what they like, and hit publish

I have never gone down that path as all my created sites are for my software. But like anything you have for sale must exist. Products either real or implied must be visible and advertised. Before you do the job you have to sell the job.

Some successful person once advised me "Fake it before you make it", He did not believe that either. Any job requires background training, Finding out exactly what the job entails and what is necessary to be able to do a quality job. I would imagine dozens of this forums members gain by correcting the sites of those that falter in the web design field. I gain by filling in the gaps left by others. Web design I am B#^*& awful at but I have a very nice customer who in this case is easily pleased

I know this is an old thread but I wanted to add a couple of things.

First, I tried Joomla and yes it was a nightmare. Wordpress is a great platform and does not have to 'look all the same'. There are themes out now that can be completely customized and if you can do a little coding you can do some extra things within Wordpress.

The main thing I wanted to add is about clients and pictures. I have a client that has 5 pages on their site with 8 pictures on each page. They wanted to update all the pictures so I told them sure, just take them and send them to me.

They sent pictures for one page at a time but every picture was a totally different resolution. Goody.

I wound up 'teaching them how to set the resolution on their phone camera' and told them to stick to one camera. Nightmare.

Just something else to think about.