building a web interface

[Shel]

Hello,

I am pretty new to all this. I have some coding experience, and am
currently most comfortable with Python.  I also have database design
experience with MS Access, and have just created my first mySQL db.

So right now I have a mySQL db structure and some Python code. My end
goal is to create a browser-based interactive fiction/game thing. My
code is currently just using dummy data rather than pulling in data
from the db, but I think/hope it won't be too big of a deal to
interact with the db through Python (famous last words...).

My main problem right now is how to do the web interface. I don't know
much about web architecture, unfortunately. I think I need a CGI
script?

What I would really like is to find a GUI tool to design the interface
that would have customizable templates or drag-and-drop elements or
something, so I wouldn't have to code much by hand. Something easy, if
such a tool exists.

Also would prefer something that I would be able to install/use
without having much access to the server where the site will be hosted
(on a university server that I don't have control over). I don't fully
understand how a lot of the tools I have been looking at work, but it
seems like they're often things where you'd have to get an
administrator to do stuff on the server (is that right?), which I
would prefer to avoid.

It looks like Django has some sort of standalone implementation, but
I'm not clear on how that would work or how much of a learning curve
there would be for using it.

If anyone has any thoughts or suggestions, I would really appreciate
it.

Hope my questions make sense. I don't really know what I'm doing, so
could be they're a bit silly. I apologize if that's the case, and
please let me know if you need any additional informmation.

Thanks,
Shel