MArcomage

So I got my idea for a website that I think might end up generating revenue (worth mentioning), and even if it only covers the costs, it'd still be worth it. Problem is, I've only done a bit of programming way back when, so I'm quite lost :P

Personal experience, articles, just need some resources to get me started (googling = too much of too little) I guess the things I'm wondering about are:

-Apart from registering the domain, what are the other costs? Servers, anything else?
-How much will servers cost approximately? Is it easy or is that part a real hassle?
-Is there any easy software or will I have to rely on someone else for most (if not all) of the building of the webpage?
-Where can I find out the pros & cons of different scripts, as I need a good one for a webpage that's going to be mainly text-based, but good for user-generated material, user-accounts, and good support for graphs, a multi-choice "advanced" search engine and linking?
-Any and all other info you think might be relevant.

I got a friend who's probably quite alright at making webpages (more of a programmer but), might need some of his friends to chime in, but I'm also open to working with someone on this forum or the other forum I'm asking this on as well. I guess that's more in the future, but if anyone's interested in working on structuring a webpage (I'll handle all actual content) we can talk through PM.

But yeah, any and all help would be great, maybe some general stats on this page would be good help as well.

Well, here are my tips:

MySQL - database software (free)

PHP - a widely-used general-purpose scripting language (free)

Apache web server - web server software (free)

JQuery - a fast and concise JavaScript Library (free)

JQuery UI - provides abstractions for low-level interaction and animation, advanced effects and high-level (free)

ie7-js - a JavaScript library to make MSIE behave like a standards-compliant browser (free)

CakePHP - the rapid development php framework (free)

Google webmasters tools, Google analytics for both basic and advanced statistics (free)

Thanks man! I'll be sure to check 'em all out (the free part = awesome), hopefully it'll clear up to see how much I can do on my own. I mean, the idea for the site isn't too advanced, so I think I ought to, but knowing how programming etc works, if I manage to do it all myself, there'll be one small detail that I'll want to have that I won't figure out how to do with the program(s) I choose XD

I agree with Mojko's choices, except I'd replace PHP with Python and CakePHP with Django. Python and Django are very popular, well-supported and well-documented. Python is a language of the future and PHP is living in the past :P

You could also look into Ruby on Rails.