Depends partly on what you're trying to do, and partly on personal preference. A simple page, with maybe a logo across the top, a left or right sidebar and then a main content area is well-suited for a table. And tables make it easy to keep content separated and organized.
On the other hand, using CSS gives you many options tables do not. Absolute positioning of elements, overlapping elements and dynamic content are better served by avoiding tables since they limit your options in this regard.
And of course if you're displaying tabular data a table is the best way to go, imo.
I personally use tables a lot with my
own site [
^]. I use a 2-column table with 3 rows. The top row has one column with the colspan attribute set to 2. Then the next row has 2 columns, one being a narrow sidebar on the left and the other is home to the main content of the page. Then the bottom row also spans 2 columns and contains the page's footer. Nice and simple.
I'd also recommend learning the basics of
PHP[
^]. Using the PHP "include" command allows you to base much of your site on templates you make yourself. Updating the site becomes much easier, and you're still using plain old HTML, but with the
include command to import content.
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