Some stuff I learned about making a website.
Don't use your ISP for your pages unless you plan to stay with that ISP as long as you want to keep your website. I changed ISPs and lost my site. (But if you make it on your computer and upload it, you can just upload it somewhere else.)
If you can afford it all, get your own domain and don't use a 'free' web host. Free hosts will put ads on your site.
Do not register your domain with the web host. Register with a reputable, independent registrar. It will cost a few dollars more, but you will have control of your domain. I found this out when I moved to a new host. It took days to get them to turn loose of my domain. Read 'hostage'. A friend says his was held hostage for two years!
It is really advisable not to use software to build your web that is 'owned' by your host. It will be proprietary which means if you leave that host, your web site is owned by them, not you and you will lose everything.
Don't edit pages on the server. At least don't keep everything on the server. Keep a copy of your web on your computer and a backup on external media. If your host crashes or goes out of business you still have your site!
Make your website code 'validate'. This will ensure it looks the same in every browser. Check to see what your site looks like in at least two or three browsers. I didn't do that for the longest time. I was using Internet Explorer and it looked good. Then I started using Firefox and it looked awful! Tidy will help as well.
If you use a web editor like Frontpage or Expression Web (there are several more), don't just rely on them to make your pages. Learn some basic HTML as well.
Don't use FrontPage extensions. A lot of web hosts are no longer supporting them and a lot more probably will stop supporting them in the future.
There are some easy ways to do things and some hard ways. The easiest is to use a Dynamic Web Template and style everything using CSS (Cascading Style Sheet). The hardest way is to do everything from scratch like notepad.
Another thing I've learned is your site is never completed.