I'm rewriting my existing game, which is a Soccer management game. At the moment it's written in a very old version of BASIC, with the information parsed into text files which are then sent to/from the managers. I'm working on updating this to a web version, with a MYSQL database. I already have the website, have set up the database and I'm fairly adept with HTML and MYSQL and have started learning PHP. I know enough to get working on my game, but I'm not too happy with my tools.

At the moment I'm using Netbeans, which is good and just uploading the files to my server and testing them in the browser. It's all fine, but my biggest problem right now is that I need to design the webpages. I do know HTML but just putting everything into basic tables etc looks very dull and it takes forever to do anything that looks good, just by trial and error.

So, does anybody have any recommendations for something that I could design my webpages in, bearing in mind that they're mostly just for displaying the database information, e.g Tables of players (need to be interactive probably, so I'm looking at HTML5 and PHP), tables of finances, training schedules, transfer lists etc.

In my head, I'm thinking that I could design the tables, then lift the code out of the designer and add it to my files manually, though that's probably just wasting time, but I'm in no rush.

Sorry if this is a common question, but wondering if someone may have some ideas for my specific project.

I know Dreamweaver is often recommended, but I can't afford it. Also I really don't like VS from what I've seen of it. So something free and simple would be ideal, if there's anything out there.

As far as I understand you need some kind of visual site designer.

As an example you can check Coffeecup ( http://www.coffeecup.com/designer/ ) or Google Web Designer ( ) or try to google some other such software.

With all honesty, though, whatever path you'll take, you will still spend a huge lot of time on user interface. It generally takes the majority of time in any project.

I'm sorry if I'm saying the basic things you already know, it's just that there is a chance that you don't and it'll save you a lot of time.

While you are learning PHP, pay attention to templates! You build a template and use it for output; you can use one template for, many tables, and if you need different functionality, you just copy the template and modify it. Combine a number of small basic templates to create a page of any complexity; reuse templates wherever possible.

Thanks guys, useful information and I'm looking into those 3 suggestions for starters :)