You can also use Netscape Composer to create web pages.

My experience has been that Word '97 is easier for the person who is brand new to all this because it really is a lot like using Word as a word processor. However, I have had problems formating fonts with Word's web editor and it makes messy code (the stuff which your page is actually written in and which Word creates for you with a user-friendly interface). Once you get the hang of how web pages come together and how HTML works a bit, Composer is better in some ways. It is cleaner, but it is a little harder to learn from scratch. Both Composer and Word '97 have things they each do better and worse than the other. Use what you like.

Composer is also free...this can be a major factor for home use.

I may get around to creating a guide for using Composer this spring, but I doubt it.
Once you know how Word's editor works, you should be able to figure out Composer's in an evening.