PHP, ASP, CGI are server side scripting. It's line of code that execute on the server to generate HTML Code customize for you.

To answer your first question, you should learn HTML all the way. No with FrontPage or any program, you HAVE to know HTML and be able to create and edit HTML with Notepad. Also, check about XHTML. XHTML is a merge of XML and HTML to create a new standard for Internet. Check http://www.yahoo.com or http://www.Google.com for more informations about XHTML.

This is the first key, you have to know XHTML (HTML). Alot of people will tell you about how much the image on a website are importants and I agree but they are realy hard to do and the program are not cheap so I suggest you drop that to concentrate on XHTML because web design compagnie usually have specialist to make images.

Also, I realy suggest that AFTER you know HTML all the way, you learn PHP. That all!