Having put up more than a few Web sites myself, one of the easiest ways I've found to get your domains set up and running is to simply go through Yahoo.
Yahoo will register your domains' names for under $10 a year, though as of this writing, Yahoo is having a sale on domains for $2.99 per year. That's a lot cheaper than some registrars I've seen that are still trying to charge $20 or more just for domains.
Once you get your domain registered, you still need to host it somewhere. Again, Yahoo has a simple answer, or several simple answers, in its Geocities service. You can plunk down your domains for free at Yahoo Geocities, but you'll have ads. For a nominal fee ($4.95 per month) you can get 500 MB storage and 25 GB per month transfer -- that's more than enough for most starter sites.
If you host your domains through Yahoo Geocities, you'll get plenty of tools to help you design and manage your site, enough to do just about anything legal you might want to do on the Net.
You'll have access to Yahoo web page templates as well as a point-and-click designer, in addition to the ability to manually play with your domains' HTML.
Yahoo also gives you choices for uploading, using their easy upload manager or the more traditional FTP for large sites. E-mail is part of the package.
A recent addition to the Yahoo Geocities tools is the ability to start and manage a blog on your domains.
All in all, registering and hosting your domains through Yahoo is an easy solution for a home user or small business.