You'll want some help when building web pages. A good resource to use is the w3Schools.com site. It's a good resouce for learning and referencing. In case you even just need a long list of elements and attributes, go here.
Here's some more info on XHTML from CodeProject.com. This article is a bit more geared toward people who already have some familiarity with HTML, but it's a good guide for understanding the benefits of XHTML versus HTML.
There's a lot of CSS out there; you'll need some help. w3Schools.com is a good resource to use for CSS, as well as XHTML. CSSzengarden.com is also a good resource that displays how powerful CSS is, but CSS-Tricks.com offers instructions in addition to examples.
Unless you've got a natural eye for what looks good on the web, you'll need some exposure to good influences. Let's start off with some color theory. This article will go over the basics of how to achieve specific goals with color schemes. That same website also offers other articles on website design theory.
Here's a brief article about more color theory. It recommends reigning in your color scheme to 5 colors.
Freedigitalphotos.net doesn't offer a creative name, but it does offer free images, provided they're not used for commercial purposes.
Flickr.com is a popular site that offers all kinds of images under different licenses, to include pay for images and images which are free when not used for commercial purposes.