I’m just wondering how I can make a fancy-schmancy website like this for my Microvision site. What do you use? Java? How do you start? I’d also like to have a forum for the Microvision, so I’m wondering how to do that and incorporate it into the website like you do. As you can see, my current Microvision website needs lots of help.
http://www.atari2600land.com/microvision/
If I can do this, I might update atari2600land.com as well…

For cool visuals and effects you can do just about anything with a little knowledge of javascript and css. As for a forum if you want to do it yourself you’ll need some database skills and some sort of server side language like php, asp or jsp. I’m pretty sure you can signup for hosted forums and have someone else do the work for you but I’ve never looked into if any are free or how much they would cost.
Another big question is do you host your own site on your own server or is someone else hosting it. If someone else is hosting it chances are you’ll only be able to use the tools they are willing to provide.
I write web applications for a living and use ASP.NET running on the .NET framework using Microsoft IIS as the web server and using Oracle or SQL Server as the databases.
At home I use Linux running Apache as a web server and using PHP for the server side code and MySQL databases.
It’s really a matter of preference (if your in charge of all your web hardware).

Beyond that if your looking for examples or specific things I could go into more depth but without know what your options are I can’t really get too specific without boring everyone who would read this. 🙂

This site uses PHP for server-side scripting, MySQL for data persistence, CSS for the look and a little bit of JavaScript for frontend interactivity.

You could start with some PHP beginner’s tutorials and build your first dynamic website. For example a simple game database for Microvision. Then start using MySQL for storing and retrieving the game data. PHPMyAdmin is a very good interface, not only for beginners. The rest will come naturally with more tutorials and googling. 😉

If you don’t want to learn the whole stack of technologies involved, you could also quickly get something set up without any coding using WordPress. You can choose from many free themes and extend your site with plugins, like bbPress for forums, right from the backend. Get if from wordpress.org. If you don’t have capable webspace, you can also use a hosted solution like WordPress.com.