Apart from all the help on the forum, tutorials and so on, here are some stuff that helped me (especially in the beginning!)

So, I am ready to build my site.. I should know what it is that I am going to "display" ( am I selling stuff, giving information, ...is it products or services etc.... ) 

having a bit of clarity on this helps me to plan.

Why ? ----- The main reason is that I believe my visitors will want to see as little as possible on my "Home Page", Once they know that I am offering the stuff they want to look at, they will stay and look at the rest of my site. So, I don't want to present them with a million things. just enough to get them interested.

How do I do this? --- Well I ( not everybody does this) use Pictures (or images)

So, why am I telling you this???

It's simple, if you want to use an image or picture, you first have to get it from somewhere (I will share on some ways to get great stuff and how to do it later), then save it to your PC, then (if required) you need to edit it ( make it look nice and get it to the right size... ps, "you cannot really make a small picture display any bigger, It will become unusable as it will "blurr" or become pixelated."), The next step is ti UPLOAD it to the server or maybe I should say, to your website. Once it is on your website, there are very little you can do to make it look different ! That is why you edit it before the time.

Great news ! just upload one picture first.(this will create a Drop Box in another program called PICASA) Then go to https://picasaweb.google.com (make sure you sign in with your same account details). Now look at the "My Photos" tab and see that there is a icon called "Drop Box". Open this box by clicking on it. Then find the links towards the top that says "upload". Click it and a window appears that allows you to either drag and drop pictures or get them from your hard drive. I suggest that you click on the blue link and rather upload from your PC. ( you can select multiple pictures and do a "bulk upload" that way. ). Once the pictures are in the Drop Box you will see them in the Site Builder window that appears when you need to upload a picture to your site !

The best ever thing is..... In the Picasa website... you have editing facilities that are absolutely wonderful ! - click on a picture and then look for the small colorful image at the top. mouse-over it and it will tell you that it is the correct link to the editing features. Now hold on to your hat ! A new window will open ( currently it says that the program is called PICNIC and that it will be discontinued. Don't stress, Google bought it just for you to use ! Now your picture is opened in PICNIC (it takes a while to load but it's worth it). Go right ahead and play with it. You will be amazed. Finished with the edit? Then click the Yellow "Save to My Album" and save it - when asked, select saving a copy or else the original will be replaced with the edited one. It's now available in Drop Box and can be seen from within your Site Builder.

OK, so this is what happens when you Upload a picture, The good folk who build this system had the great idea of duplicating every picture and image you upload to another one of the Google programs. This is called PICASA and is a incredible facility. Use it and save lots of time.

Hope this will be of assistance 

Britsy