I wouldn't mind learning to make 'modern' web sites, but the problem is the last web site I ever worked on was an HTML clan site hosted by geocities in about 2001. Can somebody at least....give me a CLUE on what I need to start looking at?

Most "modern" websites from what I've seen are either built in CSS or are custom designed blogs (eg., WordPress). But yeah, I think CSS is probably what you should be looking at.

yeah, definatly css.

http://www.code-sucks.com/css%20layouts/fixed-width-css-layouts/
check out those templates and pick them apart, see how the .css files modify the html/php files.

then check out http://www.w3schools.com/Css/default.asp
browse their tips/lessons and then just explore what can be done. you can make all kinds of different layouts with it.

• Cascading Stylesheets (CSS)
• Adobe Illustrator &/or Photoshop
• Extensible Hypertext Markup Language (XHTML)

If you're merely focusing on the design aspect of the website, you'll probably want to get familiar with a Content Management System (CMS) or two. Something like Drupal or Joomla. I would also recommend using something like Dreamweaver although it isn't absolutely necessary.

I'm assuming that when you say "design" that you're not much interested in web programming so I won't make any recommendations in that department.

Note: There are freeware alternatives to Illustrator (InkScape) & Photoshop (GIMP).

CSS is great because you can easily separate style from content, and can change style across an entire website. I recently started work on a design for a website, about the bottom-up approach to nanotechnology. We don't have any actual content yet, but I pasted some set text to test the style. What do you think?
http://sickball.org.uk/nanomort/

Has anyone used any of the Wikimedia stuff? Is it easy to set up your own wiki?

Not necessarily....see this is where I need help. What exactly is the difference! I can teach myself this stuff, but I don't know what I need to learn.

Alright, let me make it more clear:

You need to learn HTML and CSS standards. Period.

Anything else will come after this, so you might as well just get it over with and then you'll have the language to google whatever else you need. There is no short way around because they are the shortest paths. Just do it.

I am very sorry, I merely came here with such questions because I want to be just like you. I have mistakenly asked about things that are way beyond my mental capacity. Your knowledge is superior to mine. I should never have dared bother your greatness with my insignificant dabblings. Shall I bow?

meh, I'm completly self taught, if you know html then CSS is easy to learn.

I think Kirbs was assuming you were trying to get around learning CSS or something. While his tone might be a bit confrontational, his suggestions are actually valid.

My preferred way of doing stuff is purely text in an IDE. Notepad++ is a simplistic editor with syntax highlighting, and there are others out there.

You will have to learn how to do the text stuff whether you want to or not, since there's no "modern" and "good" WYSIWYG based editors out there that will make standardized documents that will look the same across all browsers. I think Nvu might be a good WYSIWYG editor but I haven't really tried it so I can't say. Even with a near perfect one you will likely have to tweak the source code to get everything working perfectly across all the major browsers.

So you should learn XHTML (a "strict" form of HTML which helps you build pages which look the same across all browsers easier) and CSS levels 1 and 2. HTML 5 and CSS 3 introduce some new stuff you should look at too, it's all about keeping up with the latest standards.

When making pages regularly run them through the official XHTML and CSS validators provided by the W3C (Google for them) so you can catch any errors you make early so they're easy to correct. You should also be keeping an instance of every browser you're making the page for so you can catch and fix rendering/JavaScript problems in one quickly and easily, otherwise you have to hunt them down later.

Don't be afraid to look at the source of other web pages to see how they did something you find interesting. It's probably the best way to learn, although you'd need some basic knowledge first to understand what you're seeing in the source of course.

One last thing I do, but it's mostly up to personal taste, is I try to avoid JavaScript whenever possible. If I can do something in CSS (IE hover effects), I do it there, that way it works even if JavaScript is disabled due to NoScript or whatever. Similarly whenever I use JavaScript in a page for something, I try to make the page work and not be broken when JavaScript is disabled. It takes a bit of extra effort and planning (sometimes you have to code the same thing twice, once server side and once client side, if you're using a server side language like PHP) but I think it's the polish that counts.

I wasn't trying to be mean, sorry it came off that way. It just seemed like you thought there was more than what's already suggested. HTML and CSS are standard, and once you know those the rest falls into place.