Hi, I'm still a newbie with we programming, and am looking for advice. What I am looking to create is a site that will allow you to search for restaurants in your area. My idea of how it would work is you enter your location in a search box, a results page comes up with a map with markers on it and to the side is a listing of all the restaurants in the area, each has its own marker. Kind of like on youtube when you are watching a video, there are links to similar videos on the side. If you click on the name of any one of the restaurants, it will take you to a page that gives a little info on the restaurant, shows you the entire menu, and has a user rating system. Registered users can rate their experience at the restaurant from 1-5, and also leave comments if they desire. When a user gives the restaurant a good rating, it would be added to his personal "favorites book," where he could quickly pull up the menus for any of his favorite restaurants. Also, based on his "tastes" or ratings, there would be a "recommend" feature that would get him to try new restaurants. So it all sounds good, but the only programming I understand is HTML! What do you guys recommend I learn? Any cms or framework out there that could perform functions like this? I am dedicated to this project and will (almost) do whatever it takes.

Thanks,
Greg

People pay thousands upon thousands of dollars for a system like that. Before I even get onto how let me help you re-evaluate this project.
You will have to add restaurants. Hundreds of thousands (maybe even millions depending on how many restaurants there are in the US) of them. You can have users do this but can you really trust them? You'll have to get a complete map of the whole entire United States and upload it onto a server. That right there would be the hardest part of it all, but just to make it harder you have to identify each square on that map and then show what square the restaurant is. Or you could take the cheap way out and try to find a map that shows were each restaurant is so each will look different, which to some might be unprofessional. You're going to need way more than 1 person to do this.
BUT if you can get past all this then cool :-). And here's what you'll need to do -
Use a server-side programming language such as PHP (PHP: Hypertext Processor), Perl, or ASP (Active Server Pages). All languages (especially PHP and Perl) are somewhat alike function wise. Price wise ASP is not a good option. PHP is free, it can run on a Microsoft or Linux server. The same is of Perl. Get a server that supports one of the above languages, find a few programmers and learn it yourself then start programming. You might be able to program it yourself but that will take a good long while. Next set up a forum such as IP.Board (Invision Power.Board which is about $150-$200 and a great piece of software which runs with PHP, and MySQL (MySQL is a database system), or phpBB which is free, really good for the price, but not as good as IP.Board. People will talk on your forum. A forum is completely optional but it will help people come and enter restaurants into your database. Now you're pretty much set up. If you learn the language you're using it is quite an easy task, but will take forever.
In the long run it will be best to hire 2 or 3 good programmers in the language you're using. I am a PHP/MySQL programmer and would gladly help for a very small fee. I'll deal with all the technical stuff and even get you a server to work with as well as a domain (www.yoursite.com). I also have a great deal of friends that also work professionally with PHP/MySQL and they would also surely help. PM me if you're interested.

Thank you for the insight. I do have a friend who knows a little php who has offered to help, so I will see if he can figure a bit of it out. I agree, the forum is a great idea. I will install one. I did look around a little and google has an api for their maps service, so that might be worth playing around with, and since most businesses are listed there, it would be pretty easy to prove if they are legit. It looks like a lot, but I am willing to learn it, and if I can't, you'll have a pm.

Thanks again for the help
Greg