I am a novice at building websites and considering to make one. But there is a lot of confusion that's going on right now. I guess every beginner faces them. Few questions that come up are:

1. I have an idea and a need a website. That's all i know right now. But how do i start ? HTML is for sure the basic language but there are a hell of other technologies too. What is actually asp, php, ruby etc? How do i choose the right one from them? Other than asp, php there is javascript and other languages under the same belt. What are they used for?

2. Hosting. When i am choosing the host, what considerations i have to keep in mind ? What support do i need from them (other than getting some important space obviously!).

3. I am considering of making the website in ruby on rails. I don't know about php and what effect it would have if i choose ruby over php. I thought about ruby just because its new and i dont want to learn some thing "not new"! :P Moreover what is a framework and how does a framework effect my development process?

These three questions are just to explain my "confusion" better. There is obviously a lot more to it. Just to try to answer how the flow of website development goes keeping in mind my questions!