Nick,
I am actually a web designer, and it really depends on what you want to do with the site. Are you looking for more functionality than pizazz? Or a mixture of both? I use GoDaddy for my hosting solutions, and it is a pretty good domain registrar/hosting site for smaller sites. They also have some good template applications where you can install it on the server and tailor it using wizards that they have. I am not too familiar with them (as I just end up making my own code and such), but you might want to look into them.
The first big step is determining what you want to do with a site. Make sure you don't try and spread yourself too thin, and identify what you want the site to accomplish. After that, make sure you have a concise, easy to remember domain registered (its harder than you think nowadays!), and go from there
To learn more about web design, you can check out simple tutorials at
http://www.w3schools.com/,
http://www.devguru.com/, and, my personal fav,
http://www.webdesignfromscratch.com/. The last has a nice tutorial section on creating nice sites.
Any more questions, let me know!
