[Coda]

No no no no no. GoDaddy is not good. GoDaddy is one of the worst services on the face of the Internet. Their hosting service is mediocre, their customer support is poor, and they have evil practices with their domain names -- THEY own the domain name, not you.

If you're looking for free hosting, I was using Zymic for a while. They don't have the greatest uptime in the world but they're the least annoying free host I've ever used -- absolutely no ads. No free domain name but you do get a short name like "duchess.zxq.net" to use.

If you don't mind paid hosting, I wholeheartedly support Arvixe. They're Trisphee's hosting, and their rates (especially for small personal websites) are very reasonable ($7/mo for month-to-month, as low as $4/mo if you pay in advance). They offer free domain names for life with the purchase of any hosting plan -- and they mean it; you own the domain name and you're free to take it with you if you decide to switch hosting providers. And their tech support is AMAZING -- fast responses, real people, and helpful results, and both the phone line and the live chat support are open 24 hours.

Edit: Don't learn Flash and ActionScript for the purposes of making a website. Flash-based sites are the scourge of the Internet -- they don't come up in Google searches, they're hard to navigate, and the Flash plugin causes problems with computers and web browsers. Make your website attractive and usable using HTML and CSS; Flash should be reserved for animations, games, and other self-contained things that aren't going to ruin your site if someone has Flash disabled.