http://freewebs.com or try town square, they are failrly limited, but you can add forums, video uploading, and other things of that like. Most of them die out within the month mind you, and it can be a little confusing. I recommend you buy a system called DreamWeaver from Adobe, it's easy to use and it costs 100$ or so for the latest model, or maybe that was athe one notch down... btw, this would get better answers if it was in the programming section of the community.
First you need to know exactly what the website is for. Will it be your personal page or a corporate one for business? Do not make corporate websites if you dont know how, it will do no good for the company.
If you want to really learn how to create websites, first learn HTML. It's pretty easy to grasp the basics. Then play around with it and learn the basics of CSS. Then maybe Javascript and PHP if you have some programming skills.
At that point you can decide what do you do the best. Then just master your skill in the desired direction.
Experience is 90% of success here. It took me about 4 years to get to the commercial level and about 6 years to gather a good team. Now i am the web developer, i earn my living running a small site-building company
There are tons of information in the Net, no real need to attend classes or something.