How to build a website?

Ah, I have been doing the same this past month, except without the paying job part.

The books I've been using, and the order in which I've read them:

1. Avinash Kaushik’s Web Analytics 2.0
   
2. Andy Harris's HTML, XHTML, and CSS All-in-One Desk Reference for Dummies
   
3. Sue Jenkins's Web Design All-in-One for Dummies
   
4. Michael Fleischner’s SEO Made Simple
   
5. Google Advertising Tools
   
6. Designing for the Social Web by Joshua Porter
   
7. Lynn Beighley's Drupal for Dummies

#1. You may not think you need this, but you do. You need to be able to measure outcomes, and you should be doing it from the get-go. Google Analytics is free and very easy to use, and the book is extremely well-written.
#2. Yeah, it's a Dummies book, but you're writing code by page 10. Another well-written book.
#3. Not a great book but it does give some ideas that #2 does not. You might want to go with a more advanced design book once you get this far, plus look online for free public domain themes under a creative commons license.
#4. This is for getting your site onto Google and getting good page rank. A very fast read.
#5. This enhances #4 (you can probably skip this one if you wish); it's more for if you want to go the paid search route.
#6. This one can also be skipped if you're not building a forums-type site.
#7. This one is skippable if you're not using Drupal.

Hope this helps. All are available on Amazon.

The Newsletter from this site may be of some assistance to you. http://www.logicalexpressions.com/pr10-04.htm

Thank you so much Jespah... This is a great start for me.
I will definitely be getting these books. I plan to do some heavy reading this weekend and this will absolutely put me on the right path. Do you use an editor? or any sites to help you build your websites? Paid or otherwise??

Awesome Thanks Dutchy. I just signed up.
I really appreciate the help.

I use Notepad ++ (it's free, and it shows you some basic things in your code).

You need to be writing for, heh, every kind of browser out there. Which is a massive pain. I need to run and have dinner but you might want to start to Google things like XHTML strict and css (cascading style sheets).

I warn you, I'm no real designer. I can't really make it super-pretty. But I can make it work.