I am far from an expert with site building or anything to do with the web, so anything I write here should be understood that it comes from a newbie also. I built my sites using Microsoft Frontpage because it is the only way I know how. I have built three sites in my life, with the first one about 3 years ago. The first one is still up but it sucks and has nothing to do with gambling. My first affiliate site has been up about a month now and it took me two weeks to build. It is nothing fancy, but I believe a large part of my target market would prefer easy to read usefull information instead of banners and flash crap. The third site took me about two days to build because some of the content is similar to the second. It actually looks cleaner to me than the second.
My point is. I don’t think you should get caught up in having the best looking site, you should focus on having the most usefull site. Does that make sense?
I’m not sure what you mean when you are talking about getting information. I highly reccomend starting with programs who have a representitive who posts here on CAP because you can often get quick information if you need it.
Hope this helps a little.