Well there's a few things to consider when making a web-page. You could code it in notepad if you want, there's fancy WYSIWYG editors (such as Dreamweaver) if you want them but from a coders point of view they're not the best - you'll have a far greater understanding of what's actually going on with the code if you write it in 'code view' and get to understand what each tag does etc...
While you could use notepad, it's not the best piece of software...
NVU is free, as is
jEdit (great piece of software, I highly recommend this one), there's also
JPad Pro which is good but does cost...
You've also got to consider images with the web-page - if they're going to be used as backgrounds or for parts of the layout then you'll want an image editor, Photoshop is possibly the best editor but it's costly...Go with
GIMP for images, it's free, powerful and while it may take a bit of getting used to (if you're used to Photoshop) it's an awesome piece of software...
As for starting to code the site, if you want to get a grip with writing (x)HTML then check out these few sites:
HTML Goodies
Pixel2Life
W3C Schools
There's a bit of information to get you started...hope it helps, need anything else just ask and I'll give you a hand :)
-Matt