well i heard that lynda.com will help you design your first website. but regarding with the things u have to consider probably start with what is the website all about and staert from there.

I personally start with a pen and paper when I think of a possible design, from there I do a design in Adobe Photoshop (Paint.Net is a very good free alternative). After I've gotten my idea into a design I think about the HTML structure and the hierarchy DIV's that will need to be put in place, I leave the CSS until last.

1.For a first site think function over form. Your site has to work. You can spend time making it pretty once it is actually working for you.
2.Keep it logical - don't take the visitor to deadends where all the links to go back disappear. So have a menu that stays in the same place and contains links to all pages.
3.Don't go font crazy. Yes there are zillions of fonts, styles & colours that you can use but you don't need to use them all on the same page.

Keep it simple, keep it logical, keep it clean

I am a freelancer, I work PSD to XHML/any tempalte. I also work on Joomla, Wordpress, PHP, open source CMSs and eCommerce sites. Please contact me for your required site. I will quote..email me to help with it.

First of all, I think about design ideas and will often look around the web for inspiration. Sites like w ww.cssmania.com are a big help.

I will then mockup a design into photoshop and tweak it until the client is happy.

Once the design has been finalised, I will figure out the best way of coding it up into HTML/CSS/Javascript.