Neocities is an amazing platform, but only if you're willing to learn HTML and some basic CSS. If you're not too skilled when it comes to coding, it can be a little scary. Don't worry, though, I will hold your hand and guide you through the process. It's really not that difficult; once you've got the hang of it, it gets so much easier.
Okay, but where do I start?
First, you must decide whether or not you want to host your site somewhere. I would obviously recommend Neocities because it's free and, in my opinion, fairly user friendly. But if you don't want to host your site anywhere, that's completely fine, you can just keep it on your computer.
When it comes to code editors, you can use good ol' Notepad, It Just Werks™. However, if you want something a little fancier, Visual Studio Code is a good choice, but I personally use Atom for HTML files that I don't want to share with anybody. If you're using Neocities, you can just use the default editor.
Choosing site topics
Many people start out by making personal sites, usually as a way to express themselves and showcase who they are as a person (which lamentably results in children/tweens/teens revealing too much about themselves). You don't have to get personal, however. You can make a site about anything you want! In my case, I wanted to make a site about Gakkou Gurashi, which also served as a personal site. Don't worry about anything being "silly" or "weird" - it's your site and you're just starting out, so who cares? Go ham! Go absolutely nuts!
So, what's next?
Once you've decided what your site is going to be about and whether or not you want to host it, it's time to get into the endoskeleton (inner skeleton, basically). HTML is a markup language, so it's not really used for anything adside from telling your browser what to display and where to display it. For this, we use something called tags. The very first tag you'll ever write honestly depends on the tools you're using. If you're an absolute beginner, I will provide you with the endoskeleton so you don't have to worry about typing it all out the first time.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>[ title ]</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css">
</head>
<body>
<h1>This is a heading</h1>
<p>This is a paragraph. Hi!</p>
</body>
</html>
!DOCTYPE html tells your browser "hey, this is a HTML file". Make sure you save your file with the .html extension! If you don't, you will not be able to view your webpage. :-(
Most HTML tags need closing tags, but others do not (such as <img> or <br>. To know if a HTML tag needs to be closed, simply ask yourself: Will I be putting content inside this tag? If the answer is no, it doesn't need one.