Cloudy

Hi Michael,
 
It's a bit daunting when you first start out in the world of web design isn't it? I remember way back in 1997 when I got my first IT job, I was handed a book by my boss that had some 500 pages or so in it and told "We want an online shopping site"...I'd never done a single piece of web design or web work until that day.
 
Anyhow, here are links to a few sites that may assist you
 
Photoshop Tutorials
http://www.good-tutorials.com/tutorials/photoshop/buttons (they have lots of other tutorials on there too)
http://www.tutorialized.com/tutorials/Photoshop/Web-Graphics/1
http://www.grafx-design.com/phototut.html (they have some tutorial videos on their site)
http://www.photoshopstar.com/web-graphics/star-badges/ (Web 2.0 style graphics)
http://www.planetphotoshop.com/category/tutorials (seems more advanced with it's tutorials)
 
 
Web 2.0 Design
http://sixrevisions.com/tutorials/photoshop-tutorials/how-to-create-a-clean-web-20-style-web-design-in-photoshop/
http://www.photoshoplab.com/web20-design-kit.html
http://www.cssjuice.com/13-online-generators-for-web-20-design/ (generates assets for web 2.0 design)
http://www.templatemonster.com/category.php?tid=-+Any+-&search_words=-+Any+-&from_=-+Any+-&to=-+Any+-&type=1&cat=102&style=&author= (examples of web 2.0 templates, though I personally don't think some of them are very good)
 
Web 2.0 Coding
Whenever you're designing a site you should use Valid CSS code for presentation/layout rather than the old fashioned tables based layout.
 
Beginner CSS Tutorial Sites
http://www.subcide.com/tutorials/csslayout/
http://www.smashapps.org/2009/07/css-tutorials-for-beginners.html
http://htmldog.com/guides/cssbeginner/
 
Some good CSS resource sites
http://www.cssplay.co.uk/
http://www.w3schools.com/css/
http://www.cssdrive.com/index.php/examples/
 
You will find that you are able to have much more control over your page too using this method. You should test your website in a range of Browsers not just one or two. As a rule of thumb we always test our sites in the following:
 


 
Internet Explorer 8,7 and (where required to) 6
Firefox (PC and Mac - and get the Firefox Web Developer toolbar too, it's excellent)
Safari (PC and Mac)
Opera (PC, Mac, Nintendo Wii - yes we have some clients that asked us to test on Wii)
Chrome
Lynx (this last one is a text only browser and will display your site as it would be seen by a search engine such as Google)

 
You can use JQuery scripts to get some great Web 2.0 effects (image galleries, light boxes, forms etc) all for free and with working examples and documentation.
http://jquery.com/
 
Also, don't forget that for SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) content is king, as well as the usual suspects such as Title, Keywords, Meta Description etc. You must ensure that the content (wording) on your sites is well written an relevant and that your pages are laid out in a logical and structured way (for example, a H1 tag should appear at the top of the page, not at the bottom).
 
Hope this has helped you out.
 
Ian