In the beginging (newbie to web dev.)

My 0.10GBP's worth would be to work along with a web developer to begin with. To learn all the backend stuff especially the SEO/SEM side of it will take, well forever because it is always developing.
It's beneficial for both parties, You can get the GD work from the developer because most developers/programmers have little or no artistic abilities (myself included) and the developer gets work developing sites for you. You don't even need to limit yourself to one. Also along the way you could be learning on real world stuff, the best practices for website building (as opposed to design).

I would advise you to do a lot of research on different hosting packages. My company is often asked to just set up the hosting and everything for our clients. We found someone we liked, and actually ended up partnering with them so that we also make some money everytime we sign someone up for their hosting. It's set up so we make the same amount regardless of the package, which keeps us honest on recommending an appropriate package to them based on their needs.

A relatively small site can get away with something along the lines of 100 MB/month or so. The package I almost always start my clients out on is has that amount of bandwidth, and for many of them, that's fine.

Another thing you should keep in mind is the interactivity aspect. I've seen a lot of beautifullly designed pages that just don't work from a usability perspective. You'll need to learn how to create an effective navigation structure. The web has a whole lot more dimension thatn print. Not only do you need to communicate ideas visually, you need to get people to go further by clicking to the next page.

You also need to understand that the web is a more liquid media. There is no way your design is going to look the same on everyone's display. This is a common problem I see with former graphic designers - they edxpect everything to look exactly the same, all the time, teh way it would in a print project. A lot of the time graphic designers will have a tendency to make everything into an image because it gives them more control over the layout. Not only is this a poor use of the medium, it hampers search engine rankings significantly.

So, my recommendation is to do some reading on usability, interaction design, cross browser issues etc. Learn how to use CSS as well as possible - it's an excellent tool for visual designers when used properly.

That's not what you were asking about but these are problems that I see over and over again from graphic designers (and I haven't even touched on search engines too much!)

About page weight and such, smaller is always better. People get high speed internet access because they want pages to load faster, not because they want to see more eye candy. I can't say that there is a standard bandwidth for a new site, but were talking mb not gb. You'll have to master the art of image optimization A typical hosting package for a small business site may be about 50-100 MB and that needs to hold your whole site with room to spare. The good thing about the competitiveness in the hosting business is that it gets more affordable all the time. I remember when a good size plan was about 20MB and you were paying $10/month for that. Now you can get 100MB or more for that much plus all kinds of extra features.

The difficulty in finding a hosting provider is that there are so many options. There are zillions of hosting companies out there, all offering similar packages at similar rates. You want to make sure you choose someone that's reliable - that's what separates the winners and losers in that business. You can afford to be picky here since there are so many options. For me, I won't pay someone for hosting if there isn't a working phone number on the website. If they aren't available by phone there's a problem IMO. As I said, you can afford to be picky even about trivial things. Check our hosting forum for more advice on choosing a host.

And welcome to TWF, by the way! I hope you'll stop by the Introducitons area and tell us more about yourself

HTH,

Now most of the starting notes have been discussed, all i can suggest is that you scour this entire forum and look for some details and observe the suggested solutions, even if its dated quite old, some of your questions might be answered too... thats what im doing everyday for a week now...