Website Development In 2014...

For starters: there's better and cheaper alternatives than dreameaver, don't use it.

Another thing you should learn is javascript, as most sites function with that, but then again: depends on the site you're trying to make and the function.

lot of sites are also have php too.

There's a lot of small businesses and nonprofits that want to have a website even a simple one. That with newsletters and you can be making a nice amount of cash on the side.

I was going to bring up php, but honestly can barely do html/css the other two escape me.

I'd say you would be mostly fine with html/css, unless you wanted to add a scheduling portion/prepayment feature, but I'd probably pick paypal and add a button to do that.

But I'm lazy.

HTML is going to be the blue print or outline.
JavaScript, CSS and many other supplementary languages are where you are going to be doing the bulk of your aesthetic work.

You don't even need the secondary languages, but which ones you use depends on what you are trying to do and how easy you want to make it on yourself.

Thanks.

what I was getting at is if you want want to make it as some sort of income then Having the ability to make a website and newsletters could be appealing. Like for example:
Say you make a website for a local church/religious group/nonprofit. can also have subscriber links to a newsletter which can go out like once a month. You can charge for services like that. It's just another thing you can show how 'diverse' you can be

javascript was a pain to deal with imo. There ddnt seem to be much logic in its coding, not that i got to far into it. At least html made sense.

web development is cool~ when you start off b/c its has this instant gratification effect. You can see the changes that are going on pretty fast and easily and there's a lot of helpful places to get information on how to do things.
but when you make a website for a customer and you have to dive in with buying the domain, finding a hosting site, getting any ssl certificates, and worrying about seo then it kinda becomes a pain.

It is such a broad topic that it is somewhat difficult to give a concise reply.

If you are solely focused on aesthetic values, then you will most likely want to start with CSS, and play around with how you can use it to manipulate how the content appears.

Save yourself some headaches, and start with static content.

When you start to do dynamic data, then you will need to start looking into scripting/programming languages.

But templating is a powerful tool; it essentially allows you to solve a problem once, then reuse that solution as applicable.

The best thing is to dive in with an idea, and see what wall you hit first. Then start digging up on how to resolve that, repeat ad nauseum.

As said above, web development is a broad term. There are front-end developers and back-end developers (and then there are designers who just do the mock-ups/graphics/UX work).

Front-end involves everything you see on the page once it is loaded (HTML, CSS, Javascript/JQuery--which is a libary for Javascript that makes a lot of things easier). You could possibly get away with a job somewhere that would only require you to work on HTML and CSS, but you should at least have a basic understanding of how to integrate some JQuery plugins into your websites, and how to customize them using JSON (if they're quality plugins, they should have those options available). HTML and CSS are constantly evolving in that they can do a lot of things that otherwise were limited to using a programming language like JS, so you will probably see a lot of examples of cool-and-new stuff like that, but it's important to know that 99% of it will not work in IE (let alone old versions of IE), so from an accessibility stand-point, avoid having to depend on those functions to make your website usable. Jobs in this section will also commonly ask you to be familiar with frameworks like Bootstrap, but I personally prefer to do as much as I can from scratch because I like to have full control (and because last I've looked, Bootstrap tends to uses floats for their structure, which is bad). Up to you, but do be aware of it if you are looking for a job in the future.

Back-end involves the programming that is processed by a server before the page is loaded (PHP being the most common in my experience, followed by ASP although my father will swear by Ruby/Ruby on Rails and a friend of mine believes Go will eventually usurp PHP). This generally involves interaction with databases (SQL) and/or other servers, as well as processing forms, user sessions, and other information that needs to be passed between one page and another page.

Template sites like Wordpress are very popular because they make it easy for someone who has primarily front-end experience to create an entire website, as it covers the back-end development for you, including CMS (Content Management System, a portal for clients to log in and submit data to display on their website). You can also customize Wordpress, including the CMS, hence all the templates and plugins that are available to download (some people just make money off of selling these WP tools too). If you are making a website from scratch, either you should know how to work with databases and back-end development, or the website should be static and small enough that the client does not require to regularly maintain the content themselves (or else is ready to pay you to do it for them).

First question is what you enjoy. I started out in front-end when I stumbled into a small start-up that suddenly shifted me from data-entry to things way outside my box, but I happen to love programming, so I decided to delve into back-end instead. My suggestion to decide this is to try making a website from scratch (which, even if you decide to go with something like Wordpress, will help you understand how to work with it). Start just with basic HTML/CSS, try integrating some JQuery plugins (try a lightbox, which you commonly see on websites like FB or Tumblr--I use http://fancybox.net/). Then you can move onto learning some PHP (or language of your choice) and trying to use that just to set up your own simple "templates." Then eventually you can try to look into databases, but you might want to take a class on that if you are not used to programming logic.

If the answer to the first question is front-end only, then next question is where you want to go with it. If you want to do it for your own clients, then learn to work with Wordpress. If you want a job in the industry, some companies will ask you to work with things like Bootstrap and Wordpress to minimize cost/time for a project. Other companies may use and design their own back-end/CMS, so you'd have a lot more freedom, but you would need to know how to not rely on the aforementioned tools. Now that I think about it, I also wouldn't be surprised if some companies ask back-end developers to be familiar with Wordpress as well and how to build on top of it (again, to save costs).

As for web design trends, my favorite website when I still doing that stuff was http://tympanus.net/codrops/ for inspiration. My personal aesthetic is flat designs, which, last I heard two years ago, is the going trend (and Codrop's website is an example of such a design). I might be able to find other resources that I used to peruse, but I think most of that was saved on my old work computer, so I'll have to do a bit of research to re-discover them.

If you start getting into things and can't make them work, send me a PM; I happen to love debugging.

Edit: Re-read the posts and wanted to add a few things.

Java != Javascript; they aren't even related, so don't get the two confused. You may have only referred to it as Java as an abbreviation, but I wanted to make sure you didn't start looking into the wrong language.

Yes, Javascript is, relatively speaking, a confusing language (imo, mostly because you have to get used to the idea of working with the DOM). However, you can't compare a scripting language to a markup language like HTML, so don't expect the two to be anything alike. HTML is more like XML and Javascript is more like Lua.

CSS is not "secondary" and "unncessary." It is required for any validated website, unless you want everything to be black and white. Also, don't use any in-line styles unless you're working with Javascript animations.

Newsletters go into marketing, which is fine, but do know that unless you plan to write your own script to send these, people tend to handle newsletters using campaign websites, which will charge a fee (either monthly or per campaign). If you go this route, you should also be aware that there are many restrictions on the code in an e-mail (no refs (everything has to be in-line) and some HTML objects are not allowed). The easy route is to make the whole thing one big image.

When I had a website that I ran a few years ago, it was flash based with xml injections. Was basically eye-candy with the way it functioned but hell on the resources. Haven't really done anything since.

Flippant gave some great info as well as the others. I definitely recommend looking into Jquery if you want fancy things in your website (sliders, animated galleries, etc).
Also if you want the website to look okay on different resolutions, look into Bootstrap. And if you are still struggling with some basic concepts of Javascript, Jquery or HTML kinda stuff, look at W3schools. They have some excellent stuff for the basics.

Definitely good to mention responsive design.

And although I want to avoid needlessly "hating" on Bootstrap/Wordpress more than I have, you don't need either for a responsive design. The hardest part is just remembering to keep in mind scalability when you're wireframing. Aside from that, if your design/HTML is clean, a basic info website (like what Kaitaru is probably going to do) should take you less than 10 minutes to add the components that make it completely fluid.

On that note though, also get used to working with "em" instead of px or pt for fonts. I didn't want to make the shift at first, but I admit it makes dealing with fluidity so much easier.

@Kaitaru

Tsuji mentioned W3schools, which is a great reference website for quick stuff. But for stuff like tutorials, I am not sure of any websites to help people start out--I tend to learn by observing things in full action so I can get context, rather than taking baby steps. I learned CSS from using Firebug to look at cool elements on other peoples' websites. Definitely recommend installing Firebug if you use Firefox (Chome has a similar built-in feature if that's what you use) for inspecting other peoples' websites and debugging your own CSS and JavaScript. To use either, right-click on an object on a webpage and click on "Inspect Element" or just hit F12.

As for Wordpress, I think it's a great tool for what it sounds like you're interested in doing. My sister occasionally does freelance websites with a friend, and they use Wordpress (she told me around $3-$5k per website if you're also curious about pricing). It's the most popular tool in that category (which means more templates and plugins, both free and purchasable), and its CMS is easy to use for clients. It seems like the direction you should go in (but I still stress learning HTML/CSS first so that you know how to properly use, customize, and debug it). There are also downloadable plugins that will add e-commerce options to WP, although then you are restricted to using their templates unless you know enough PHP to comfortably edit them. Even though I can build my own databases/CMS/back-end, I would use WP if I were doing freelance websites for people who needed to maintain/update them on their own. It's easier, quicker, and cheaper.

As for fonts/logos--I actually tend to avoid using logo images unless it's specifically stylized. Embedded fonts are amazing, and Google provides hundreds that you can use for free: https://www.google.com/fonts. For text (aside from logo), if you want to use a specific font that isn't available here, it's better to drop it than make a graphic of it (from a marketing stand-point), or upload it into a cufon (from a legal standpoint).

To piggyback on WordPress, I LOVE working with it because of its general ease. Yes, it does require some working knowledge of HTML and CSS, but essentially it's all there. It's also ever-evolving. I remember when there was no such thing as "child themes", where you use one template and only make a barebones theme to take the rest of the elements off the "parent theme" (I personally don't use child themes--I did it once and found it easier just to do it all from scratch).

I used W3schools, but a looooong time ago (been doing this stuff for over 10 years now, there was this site called lissaexplains.com that helped along the way. It's actually still online, but some of it is outdated, but usable, information, provided you can get past the actual look of the site.