I'm looking to make a page that's IMDB-ish, but not nearly as hardcore. It would be video game related and there would be a page for each character with info, pictures, links, etc. You would be able to search by game or by the character's name. If anybody knows of any sort of template or something that would accommodate that, it would be awesome!

The trickier part is that I tend to think things over too much rather than starting small, so I'll add this as an aside rather than a requirement. In the future, I want the site to be more community-based. People could 'tag' their favorite characters to keep in a list on their profile (and the pages would keep track of this so you could view the most-tagged ones) and they could also post in discussions for each character. If I were to add something like this, what would I need?

I know these are very newbish and very general questions, but even some general answers would be great for getting me on the right track. All I have experience with so far is blogs.

I'm not a gamer myself, but I don't think you're going to find anything like that which will do exactly what you want. This is the first time I've ever seen anyone ask something like that. It's a decent idea, but that either means it's been done to death or that you're plowing virgin land. Personally, I suspect the latter.

So, the most general answers I can give are to start small (since you somewhat implied you're a newbie). Build a section out. Make it work. Keep an eye when you're building it to what you want to do in the future. Move on to the next section.

Think of it like building a house. What happens first? You lay a solid foundation. Then you put the framework in. Then the exterior structure (walls and roof). Then the interior structure (finishing the flooring, etc.) Then you move the furniture in...maybe some carpeting too. Then you add the pictures and knick-knacks and curios and other useless decorative crap. Maybe you add something big at some point, like a fireplace or an upgraded furnace.

I think you may need a database with that it will be easyer to keep all the information/dates etc...

It's not very hard but its alot of info. gathering , writing etc...

It's the initial part that's usually the hardest. I've never made a site from scratch and don't really know much about design, I'm more of a tinkerer. I start with a template and then view the code, kind of get a general feel for how everything works, then just work with that.

I'd imagine that the basic visual design of the site could be changeable over time, but it's the inner workings that I don't have much experience with, such as the database stuff you mention. I wouldn't know how to start from a 'template' of sorts with something like that and be able to apply it to the kind of page I'm looking to make. Are there any tutorials for such a thing that you think would help?

You're talking way above the level of template tweaking here.

You need to learn HTML and CSS so you can do your own pages and understand what's going on within them so that you can make changes down the line.

Once you've got to grips with that then you can move on. If you're heading down the route you've mentioned then you need to go for PHP or ASP (depending on your host) and MySQL for the database side.

I hope you have plenty of spare time.

Books for all of these are available from Sitepoint or you may be able to get the same titles from Amazon.