Couldn't agree with Sherif more. Speaking as someone on her 4th forum (because the other 3 failed) you really have to work on the traffic first. I would wait until you have at least 1,000 visits per day (500 is the absolute minimum.)
Many hosts have website building tools (Powweb.com for example) but the issue with the hosted site builders is they can be somewhat limiting so I'd recommend learning something like Dreamweaver or CoffeeCup where you can have total control. And if you go that route, any host will do. HostGator.com is a good one.
And if you need help setting up your site initially you can always use a service like rentacoder.com and hire a coder to do the initial design. I use them quite a bit for Flash projects and other things too far over my head.
Then you can maintain your site going forward in your own software.
I also want to clarify that when you do decide to try a forum, you don't use software for that. A forum consists of a series of script files that you must configure and upload to your web server. So there is no such thing as using a web builder to setup a forum.
If you do go with HostGator, they come with a free bulletin board script called
http://yabbforum.com/. Installing it is easy since HostGator uses the cpanel environment and you don't have to upload or configure anything to use the board. You just login to your Hostgator account, choose "Bulletin Board" and it is installed on your domain on the fly.
Since it's free, you're not going to get all the bells and whistles like you do with a forum like this. This is run by vbulletin and costs $160. You have to install it yourself.