What is the best way to approach building a technically sophisticated and up-to-date website?

I learned HTML basics back in the late 90s and early 2000s, but haven't done much stringent web design since. However, recently I've started a website that I'd like to do a good job on. But now that coding has evolved so much I don't have a clue as to how go about this now. The more up-to-date coding looks hyper-complicated to me and I can't believe that people are telling me that I'm supposed to write coding line-by-line. I was under the impression that we had moved to a point where people designed their pages using software like Frontpage and the software does the coding automatically. However, when I did so, and asked a question on here before, I was told my coding was way too loose and that I should be writing it from scratch. I want to make a good site, but I can't make it a full time job. I got the book Web Design in a Nutshell 2nd Edition, but what I'm really hoping for is someone to give me an easier more straightforward way and perhaps explain how people go about designing these days. This may sound a little whiny and that's because it is.