I am looking to start a website that will have the ability for flash
plugins, picture uploading, blogs, payment forms, etc (basically
almost everything someone would want on a contemporary website). I am
not sure where to start in this process. I would greatly appreciate
any advice as to where the best places are to go to start. Thanks for
the help!

As the comments show, this is complex question and you told a precious little
about your experience and resources.

I recommend to start with a book:
Building Websites with OpenCm

http://www.advancescripts.com/detailed/1087.html

There are many open CMSs to choose from - and you should try few before
you pick one.


Here is a review of the mpolular ones
http://www.openadvantage.org/articles/oadocument.2005-04-19.0329097790


Some sites allow you to test-drive several CMSs without installing them

http://www.cmsreview.com/


Select a hosting provider which has the one you pick pre-installed
or allows you to install it with a single click by something like  



Fantastico - cPanel - Webmaster StopFantastico is just how the name
implies it?s fantastic. It?s one of the more popular 3rd party add-ons
that can be purchased and added to cPanel.
www.webmasterstop.com/110.html

Hi there,

First step would be to figure out exactly what it is that you want to
do. You need to be a bit more specific. Maybe just skecth on a piece
of paper what your site would actually be.

Then, you need to decide on a domain name (such as www.example.com).
See if it exists by doing a WHOIS search here: www.dnsstuff.com

Then, go here http://www.webhostingtalk.com/ to find a host (where you
site will actually be kept. Become a member, post questions, ask for
advice, read everything you can, because as I found out when my old
host disappeared with my money, it's a nasty world in the
website-hosting business.

I think that's a good start for you, and it'll keep you busy for a
while, even before you get to the programming stage!

Good luck!

That's a lot. If you don't know about programing then you may have
several years to learn all that. To host a site like that I recomend
you to use www.dattatec.com. It's a good server and they take care of
the domain name registration too. For the designing and development of
the site (if you're going to learn on your own), I recomend that you
search the internet for tutorials on each topic (e.g., "flash
tutorial", "html tutorial", "PHP tutorial", etc.).

You should start with HTML as that's the base for websites design
(almost every site ends up delivering an HTML document to the client,
no matter the process it makes before). You can always use an editor,
but you may not have the power of writing the code manually. If that's
your choice take a look at this
http://www.htmlquick.com/tutorials.html. Javascript and Flash will
take care of the client side functionality, and for the server side
(picture uploading, forms handling, blogs, etc.) you can use, for
example, PHP as the pregraming language, and MySQL to control the
database. The server named before can handle that.

I would recommend http://www.youngcoders.com that can assist you with
any of your technical scripting and installation help, and then I
would recommend you locate a hosting provider where you can install /
test and play around with various development work while you learn.
YoungCoders.com is sponsored by a range of hosts which you can choose
from, furthermore, if the listed hosts are not good enough you can
always visit http://www.webhostingtalk.com and
http://www.hostsearch.com for more hosting providers.