Duckie: Thanks! your site
http://www.redgeographics.com/ site is sort of like what kind of website I'm thinking of. about the same level of functionality, layout, etc...
NPCBoom: I probably confused the issue by saying "web publishing" - I'm not looking to actually publish documents so much as have a website for a business that I might start in a few years. It would contain articles, but it would be more of an advertisment+ email + document repository thing...so nothing too exciting, really, I'm just ignorant about anything but the basics. I did have a "website" I set up a while back, on a linux machine, consisting of a single sentence "look, it works!" but that's it.
Fyron: thanks for the advice re PHP Eclipse et al. Will take it on board.
Thanks all for the great advice,
Alarik