Okay, I'm pretty much a n00bi3, in fact I really am. I want a website for my own personal upkeep and use. This is what I have in mind;

A .com address
Lets me issue email accounts to my friends
Create a forum w/User-Pass Entry
Some sort of way to buy from me and pay with PayPal
FTP Capabilities
IP Banning or whatever because some people need to be banned, lol
Maybe 500mb+ Space (most for money)
Maybe 1000mb+ Transfer (most for money)
Great Uptime
24/7 Support via Email, Chat and Telephone
Control Panel access
Overall pretty easy to maintain for a noobie!
AND CHEAP or somewhere 'round $100 a year total

I don't know any of this PHP, MySQL or any of that. Not yet anyway. I also live in the United States if that matters.

Any suggestions?

i use emax hosting (well, i just use my friends site:P) its got exactly what you need, your domain you will have to get later with another site.

paypal you will have to set up with papal and put a link on your site. for the forum, you will need to download invision power board or another type of forum script. for these scripts to work, you will need to set up php and mysql.

ip banning can be done with php scripts, or i believe there is a way with teh control panel for the website.

look around, you can find alot of deals

All that for newbie.

That's quite a lot.

http://www.emaxhosting.com

Mark another for emax.

Okay, I looked into the mentioned hosting service provider and liked them as much as some others but since I feel I will be able to receive more help using what was mentioned here I went with them. Thanks to those who offered their suggestions which where all the same. LoL! I am having to wait 24-72 hours before it is 'net accessable' but once it is what is the first things I should do?

check ur PM.. ..edit i figure u got space already?!

I have access to the ControlPanel what I want to do first is just setup the Home page so that I can place a couple pics on it and some text saying that'll the site will open fully on such and such date, how do I do this?

Thanks, also I am quick learner, lol!

Well this is good for a beginner. You need to learn HTML(Hyper text markup language).

www.davesite.com

Start MS-Word, type up all the sentences you want, drap-and-drop the images you want, etc.
Then save as a html file. DONE! You already got a simple web-page in front of you, now you just need to "upload" it to your webspace host (the server).
So much for web-page making



Now on to forums, most good ones are sadly commercial.
But one decent free forum software is this - phpBB.
You need to download the latest version from there, and then read the instructions and upload to the server. Then run the install from server, and its up and running!

Yes i also agree with prapthmal. And you can also use Microsoft Frontpage. I used that when i was a beginner. Its very useful.

Thanks a lot to everyone that posted! I'm moving along without coming back here too often. Anyhow, I am learning HTML and I got forums setup pretty simply and free too.

I'm using M$ FrontPage 2003!

Now I'd just like to know how to make and/or where to get banners, backgrounds, and other website components. If there are some nice templates let me know if you would.

Also dealing with forums...the avatars and sigs...I want to make my own and I'd like to make some to offer to my members, how do I go about doing this?

Ok well for templates....
www.webdogpro.com

and good banners and backgrounds you can search google for.

for making avatar and sigs thr best tool would be Photoshop CS. 30 free trial.
and here are tutorials on using photoshop CS.
www.good-tutorials.com

Check this out, http://narutofan.com/
See how in the middle of the page where they put the updates under the title it tells who wrote it, the date and the time...

I'd like to do that on my site but keep it all in a textbox that scrolls down. Anyone know how to do this?

Working to make a great site and its because of everyone here, thank you!

I would recommend useing a template and using Frames. but that might be to much to start off with.
Heres a tutorial

http://www.davesite.com/webstation/html/chap14.shtml

Its also on chapter 14.2 and 14.3

Still working on the site but does anyone know how to display my AIM status? You know Online and Offline links I guess...

???

At this site (http://webdesign.templatemonster.com/) there are many good tutorials that will teach you many things that you want to do. There is also a section of free graphic and logo templates

after purchasing, creating or downloading a template of some kind what is the easiest/best was to upload it?

phpBB its a good choice be sure to update becouse from time to time there are security leaks well normal for this kind of software

if you want any help AIM me, Matrix0978

Try http://www.locias.com/ works with phpNuke, CPGNuke and many many others too.