A lot of host's offer cPanel. cpanel has many options like softaculous. With softaculous you can install a website and edit it with little HTML knowledge.
You should go to Web Hosting Talk and ask questions there. That's where I got information and found my host for my blog and forum.
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/
When you chose a domain I would use Namesilo or Namecheap and privatize the record. Otherwise your name and address will be known to everyone on the Internet.
What is the nature of the site? Here is all the software you can install by one click with softaculous.
http://www.softaculous.com/software/
Once you create your site I would look into a reverse proxy or what is called cloud security. I use Cloudflare, but they have a bad rep. But it works for me and it's free for basic protection. Sucuri seems pretty good for the money while others will be a few hundred a month. I only pay $7.99/month for hosting and $12/year for my domain so it's not worth something that will cost me a few hundred a month. Here are alternatives to Cloudflare.
http://alternativeto.net/software/cloudflare/
Most likely your host that has cPanel will have Mod_security so make sure you enable that.
A free WYSIWYG website editor is kompozer.
http://www.kompozer.net/
For your FTP I would use WinSCP as it wil ask you if you want to delete or transfer files. Where is Filezilla doesn't and you can nuke your site by drag and drop.
Do I make any sense? LOL!
