The first site I did was all about my local village, the main purpose was to give myself something to do, so I went straight in to learning a bit of HTML and then just progressed from there by reading up and getting a book all about HTML

I ran that site for just over 10 years but recently gave the domain and site away for someone else in the village to run.

Flash is a personal thing, myself I don't like it as it take time to load and I want to see a site NOW

The cost for a Domain and hosting can vary a bit, I pay £26 for the domain and hosting.

With the knowledge I learnt I set-up my own simple photo site with the gallery part using a modified Jalbum. A quick google or bing should find a few free html editor programs, but it can all be done with just a text editor (notepad)