a few days ago I happen to find a good website about web sites it was w3schools, I starting looking over the information it has providing, and who knew creating a website who have many elements including

so many different tags

other web languages mostly for web development

my first steps are at least learning basic html, creating a basic webpages and go from there is there any information I should know.

I also know most new webpages are mostly XHTML. most webpages I have seen in notepad run with the w3schools to check the webpage.

Anyways any advice you guys or girls can offer me would be helpful.

Things to look out for

Things not to do

etc

for XHTML it was recommend not to use notepad any ideas on what I should use

Notepad++

Also check tizag.com beginner guides to popular stuff like html, css and javascript

All you really need for HTML is here: http://werbach.com/barebones/barebones.html

There are some great tools for creating websites, but if you really want to learn it, find a good editor you like and write it yourself.

The different tutorials you want to look for are: HTML, CSS, JavaScript in that order.

If you want to do more advanced stuff later on the server: PHP, Ruby.

Have fun!

Notepad++ IS an editor.

You will also need a FTP tool to upload your files to your server to see how they look.

Also learn to use Firebug extension to Firefox and IE8 development tools, especially for fiddling with CSS (the layout of your page, font sizes etc).

You can get some free program that would preview your pages for you locally, as you type your code, but you'd still have to recheck that everything is alright in IE and Firefox (and also Google Chrome and Safari).

Many little changes can be updated in Firebug on the fly, without the need to upload and refresh.