One good way to go about designing your first site is to look at other sites which you like for inspiration. For example, maybe you like the way the yahoo home page looks. Try and study the elements which make it appealing to you, and try and understand what they are doing design-wise which makes it interesting.
There are tons of tutorials on the web, just google "how to design a website" or check this site out:
http://www.how-to-build-websites.com/
