www.freewebs.com
geocities.yahoo.com
Are nice places to get started. (personally I like Freewebs better as they don't have much ads) You get a freewebs.com/yourname or geocities.com/yourname site and those are
free. However, if you'd like something fancier like yourname.com - that's something that you'd have to pay for.
Websites are made in html. It's the base for everything though later (and on not-free-host) you can upgrade it to php, asp and good stuff like that.
However, the links above provide whatevertheyarecalled - templates, I think - which are fancy and pretty noobish but if you don't know html, that's a way.