Professional web design companies typically quote 30 -60 days for a standard web design project. Realistically a website could be designed in a day, or it could take a year. It all depends upon the specifics involved, the complexity or the website architecture, the amount of content to install and the amount of revisions that will be required.
As far as programs for web design, you want to learn the basics of web design, which rely more on knowledge and skill than they do software. The basics of web design start with HTML programming and CSS programming. Every modern web page uses these two scripting languages at minimum. Windows Notepad or Notepad++ are used as code editors to create web pages. A WYSIWYG web page editor, liek Adobe Dreamweaver, can be a great aid in learning web design, as it has a very good code editor built in. The code editor has code hint dropdowns and syntax highlighting that can be extremely helpful to a person learning web design. If web design is something you want to pursue, HTML and CSS will be the foundation of your skill set. There are no shortcuts. Master these two scripting languages and you will become a competent web designer.
Another way to increase your knowledge and understanding of how modern websites work, is to become familiar with WordPress. WordPress is the world's number one website publishing system. It will be difficult to learn how to customize a WordPress website. But once you learn, you will greatly benefit from the breadth of power, flexibility and scalability that WordPress offers.
Feel free to contact Razworks with any help with custom WordPress website development: www.razworks.com
Links: www.razworks.com