OK, I can't let mr. Mayo off that easily...
Saying that it is difficult to learn/use html/CSS is like saying that it is difficult to learn how to use bold, italics, underlining at TS ( or many other forums ). If you can insert a link to another site or graphics here, you can certainly do it on a web page. Saying html is difficult is simply not true. If you can navigate a web site, you already know how that should work, if you can use the "Show Source" menu item in any browser, you can already see how things are done. Saying that "most professionals" don't hand-code is an opinion, IMHO. And they certainly don't use RapidWeaver, nice as it is. Nor will you find it easy to 'tweak' a site designed that way. You still won't know anything about what does what, so how would you even know what to 'tweak'?
They
do use templates, but
not in the way that these programs do, same word, different method.
Nor do those professionals use DreamWeaver or their ilk because they don't know html/CSS. They
might be using those programs because they have great site management tools. But you certainly don't need that for a few dozen, well named pages!
Just as we have shown many of the common, non-professional ways that the site you have, you can easily see the same things done in many other sites. Some are even paying for them! But as long as people 'support' SPAMmers, they will continue to pay for badly designed sites, I guess.
One sure sign that a site has been designed from a 'template' is to see strangely and totally non-humanly named CSS classes. What does "class='e1'" mean to a human programmer/site developer? Nothing, of course, and that is why many sites have to be almost completely re-written when they outgrow the capabilities of the original 'developer'. It's usually faster for a professional to simply start from scratch than first decode what the stoopidly named CSS classes and definitions are for. And converting a page from a table to a really flexible web page is another time waster.
Surely, by now, it is obvious that web browsers on computers are not the only way people want to access a web site. Don't get suckered into thinking you can't understand the basics of html and even CSS and then get blind-sided by someone who claims to be a 'professional' web designer. Snake oil salesmen are still around, just say "NO" to them.
html has about three dozen 'tags'. Many you'll never use. Some you'll use once on every page. There are only about 10 to 15 that you'll really use every day and that's only if you need tables and lists. You probably already know more words that that in French, even if you never studied it!
CSS
is more complicated, but much of that is learning that it is so rich in its capabilities. But it is so useful, I can't imagine any web designer
not using it. It would be like writing plain, Courier text, instead of making use of site specific fonts/styles/colors/sizes/positioning/etc. without ever touching javascript and its evils! It would be reverting to Henry Ford's attitude; "You can have any color you want, as long as it's black."
And it replaces many of those tags that will one day be completely forgot, that are already deprecated, such as "font", "size", "color", etc.
Just as you don't need Word to write a letter, you don't need anything more than a very little knowledge and any text program to write html and CSS. Period. And please don't keep saying otherwise, ladies and gentlemen, you are simply reinforcing a web rumor.
