Well, just to give you some encouragement, I made
my site from a phpBB forum, and then added all the modifications by hand, and made the front page by hand. All done it Photoshop and phpedit(a text editor).
I just want to let you know that it IS possible, and is not really that hard. The best advice I can give you is to just do it. That's the best way to learn. But other than that. You can find help with a simple google search on any HTML command. A good program to start with is FirstPage 2000. It's freeware, but is pretty hard to find nowadays, so
here is a direct download link from my site. (4.94 MB - Right-click > Save as...) It has four different modes, (Easy, Normal, Advanced, and Hardcore) and adapts easily from any one of those modes to the next level. It makes taking the jump from WYSIWYG(what you see is what you get) editing to text editing a snap. It's probably the best freeware text editor available.

There are many features, and built-in HTML references and the format is awesome.
Hope this helps,
David