Getting Started.

The first step of web development comes from learning HTML. Hypertext Markup Language or HTML is a language used to create basic web pages. It is the base of website development. There are many places you can learn HTML from. The best one i find is www.w3schools.com & www.functionx.com. This site helps you to brush up html and many other languages required for professional designing. It has hands-on examples and tests to improve and recaptulate all that you have learned. You could find many other sites which may suit you just by searching "Free HTML Tutorials" on google. There are many books also which help in learning about website development.
To create a website, you need to have a domain and a host. There are hundreds of them on internet. Its always better for a beginner to start from a free host and then after succesful business they could go to making a pro starter.
Apart from HTML, language known as CSS is a very powerful tool in designing web pages. It is more efficient than HTML. Cascading Style Sheets or CSS are used to create well-formatted page with a good touch of style. In this, it is possible to change your style of pages by editing one page only which saves time and space as well. Site www.w3schools.com has an explained and well-written tutorial to study CSS. You could also find other site tutorials thru google.
Its always good to learn web languages rather than trying a WYSIWYG editor(MS Frontpage etc.).
This was just a basic details of what all beginners should have a knowledge of before leading to the web world.