By "this", you mean you got the domain name? It's a good one. :)

Your next step probably depends on what you hope to accomplish with your site. It's a small business site? Assuming you won't be hosting with yahoo (where it seems the BF registered the name), after you find a host you will need to tell yahoo where to send traffic to the domain. Look for a widget named something like "DNS" on the yahoo control panel.

Dreamhost is a good, cheap hosting service.

Yes, littlepinkfox.com is all mine. Why wouldn't I want to host with Yahoo? It's not for business, just for me to do whatever I want with. I'm still not sure what that is, but pictures and recipes will be posted.

First question: what do you want to do with the site? Something basic but maybe something cooler later? Your best bet is a Linux server with PHP and probably one MySQL database. Don't get a Windows host. There are hundreds of hosts to choose from - someone Stateside could probably hope you and recommend someone.

Also: FrontPage - noooooooooo! If you want to learn HTML them honestly, don't use it - it'll mangle and re-write your code, so it'll really start to annoy you. You don't need FrontPage, Dreamweaver or any other kind of WYSIWYG editor to create HTML; Notepad, Wordpad or something cheap like TextPad will do. If you really want to learn HMTL then handcode rather than WYSIWYG. HTMLDog is a great site for beginner's HTML and CSS.

Once you've got a host and so-forth, if you want some help with the HTML, CSS and so on, feel free to drop me a line - I look after a team of about 25 people with real beginner-level skills so can hopefully explain things if need's be.

Also: have you got a graphics app? You'll need one to create and edit any images you want on the site. If you haven't, have you got a budget?

Do you want a blog? Or just some static site with content that doesn't change? If I were in your position I would either use wordpress for a blog or some wiki software (maybe dokuwiki) setup so that only you can edit pages. But I am a computer nerd.

As far as learning plain HTML, I say don't bother unless you're plan on spending a lot of time making websites. No offense, but it's not that important.

Despite that, I would still avoid frontpage if I were you, it's really held in low regard. A lot of good sites are done with dreamweaver, though. You might want to try it.

I do have Photoshop 6 somewhere and experience using it from a publishing class. I know FrontPage is annoying... I would prefer to write my own code (which is why I have the books).

In this time of blogs and myspace and facebook, I want to have my own site for friends and family to see, but don't want them to have to jump through hoops to do it. I also want something more flexible and less fad-ish than myspace or facebook.

Can one of my computers at home be my server or does my hosting company have to do that for me?

Yes, I'd like to blog. And I want to change pages as necessary - like adding a new recipe on a 'recipe' page or posting new pictures to a section for my year-old nephew.

I will have to look more into wordpress. I'm at work so I just clicked around a bit and it looks like what I want.

Thanks for the help so far - I really know nothing about starting a web page...

Well, you could get one of your computers at home to be a server, but that's going to take a truly insane amount of effort compared with spending a bit of cash. I've seen Dreamhost recommended by a few people in the past but haven't used them myself. You might want to look through Web Hosting Talk's forums and see what's recommended for the price you can afford. Get yerself a Linux host with PHP and a MySQL database (both of those will almost certainly be standard features of a decent package that you shouldn't be paying extra for) and you'll be off to a good start. You might not use PHP+MySQL when you first start (in fact, you almost certainly won't unless you install something like the Wordpress blogging tool) but they'll be there when you do need them.

Photoshop has something of a learning curve to it, but there's plenty of good sites out there that'll help. Learning X/HTML is definitely the way to go. Also, are you using Firefox as your main browser? The general coder's rule is to develop in that first and then get it to work in IE. IE's rendering engine, although a lot better in IE7, sucks. In IE6 and below, it's frankly appalling. Welcome to web design :)

On Preview - Wordpress is free and open source - you download the code and install it. It's an easy install but you'll absolutely need PHP and one MySQL DB. As you get all the code, you can edit it to your heart's content to skin it. Somewhere I've got a guide to skinning Wordpress. If you need it, let me know and I'll see if I can find it.

Does wordpress 'skin' with CSS? I've dabbled in CSS for myspace and I'm crap at it. If you have a guide for wordpress I would love to get a copy of it. My email is in my profile.

And what sort of insanity would it be to set up a home computer as a server? I have a hundreds upon hundreds of gigs for storage and a network engineer boyfriend. He's just never had a whole lot of experience with web hosting. Which is why I'm here asking. :)

I can certainly recommend WordPress for setting up a bloggy site. You can get various pre-packaged Themes (free) for skinning your site, then go in and play with the code. That's what I've done here and here and here. It's CSS and HTML (broken up into pieces with .php with 'calls' to other files and functions). And you can set up other 'pages' with different skins. (And failing at CSS in MySpace does not mean you'll fail at CSS elsewhere...)

Hosting, I've been OK with DreamHost, even after their outage problems earlier this year. I got a 'basic' hosting package (paid 2 years in advance for the maximum discount) and am using less than 1% of my available discspace and bandwidth. And they have 'one-click' installation of WordPress, Wiki, Bulletin Board and even Shopping Cart software. (I'm halfway seriously thinking of 'subletting' some of my hosting to MeFites and other WebNeighbors... maybe after the first of the year)

And I think hosting from your home system is very dependent on your ISP, with most 'home' providers either not allowing, not supporting or charging big extra for what you need, connection-wise, to do it.

As far as learning plain HTML, I say don't bother unless you're plan on spending a lot of time making websites. No offense, but it's not that important.

Nonsense. No matter what you decide to do with your webpage, blog, or whatever, a basic understanding of html is a great help. You've got the books. It's not hard to learn. Learning the basics in a weekend isn't difficult. Even if you use wordpress themes, being able to make small changes is easier if you know the basics of html.

Knowledge is good. Ignoring html when you're dealing with web publishing is terrible advice.

Go download the trial version of Dreamweaver. It will give you a good, basic understanding of HTML through its code view, talks "CSS" for layout, and has some pre-defined templates (that mostly stink) that will give you a good understanding of how a page is constructed.