Everyone starts off looking to create a website, with little clue as to how to actually start doing it. First of all, as you've gathered, you need a good web host. A great way to find out who are great web host could be, are hosting review sites. An unbiased one is listed at the bottom of this article.
What you need to keep in mind though is, what are the features will you actually need for your website(s)? What you will most certainly need, and in order, are:
PHP web scripting language
At least 80% of web hosts on the Internet provide you with PHP. PHP is the most popular way of creating fancy websites. It's free and it works well. Wordpress blogs work off it, most online photo album websites work off it, in fact most websites on the Internet use PHP - so you will too.
MySQL Databases
Almost any complex free or paid script needs access to a database. And MySQL is the most popular (free) database system on earth. In fact, Yahoo.com uses it!
Ability to add more domain names
This means down the road, you can add extra www.yoursecondname.com to your web hosting account to run an extra website. You'll want to be able to add on at least 5 more domains for your web hosting - so you have some breathing space for another website later.
A Site Builder
If you have little to no website building knowledge, a Site Builder tool is a great way to start getting more familiar with the Internet and building websites. A number of web hosts offer a Site Builder tool to use, but most do not so you'll need to pay attention to the features list of the web host you are looking at if you want this feature.
CGI
CGI is a more arcane scripting language than PHP. It was more popular back in the day. It is generally less efficient than PHP regarding its inner workings so if your site gets popular this could start bogging down your hosting account, but it still has plenty of usefulness yet. Some specialist scripts require CGI because PHP just isn't as suitable for the job for a number of technical reasons. Most web hosts offer this by default, but you'll want to just do a quick double check.
FrontPage extensions
This is not a requirement. It simply makes it easy for people that have Microsoft FrontPage installed (although Microsoft have stopped developing FrontPage). This is only mentioned here as you will see it listed from time to time, its not important at all.
AwStats web statistics
Practically all hosts off their customers some form of visitor statistics software that lets you see what your visitors are doing on your website and where they are coming from. This helps you figure out if your site needs improving (if you see your visitors all running away quickly at a certain web page on your site). AwStats is the best statistics software for new web masters and advanced web masters alike. It is not in depth, you cannot get real detail, but it makes it amazingly simple and easy to get a good feel for what is happening on your website. I personally love it. Webalizer is another statistics program, but it isn't that helpful (you will see this listed too from time to time).
