I have an idea for a web site. But I don't know how all of that kind of crap works.
Do you have to get some sort of copyright on a web site?

How would I protect myself in that if I discussed this with someone they wouldn't go behind me and do it on their own?

If I hire a company to build and maintain it, what makes it mine so I profit from it, if they are doing all the work?

If I tried to do it myself what type of equipment, licensing, etc... would I need to host a web site?

This site would require a database that would grow in size exponentially, what would be the best product to handle this?

I thought maybe getting a friend or two that do web programing to just help me go ahead and build it and just buy some web space and do it all ourselves, or is that a bad idea?

I don't expect anyone to actually answer all of these questions , I,m just looking for some suggestions, mainly links to somewhere that would explain some of this type of stuff. I've searched the internet over and found plenty of stuff about software and programing languages etc...but can't find quite info that I need.

Any suggestions, comments, or links are appreciated.

JO