Web programming is for creating dynamic webpages, there are two types, server side, and client side. Server side requires absolutely no extra features of the client's browser other than being able to interpret and render html data. Client side programming requires the client's browser to be able to interpret a script and edit the webpage accordingly. Client side scripting languages include PHP, ASP, ASP.NET, CGI-bin (ie any language that can be compiled to a cgi binary format, usually c, c++, python, ect) and I'm sure there are more that have slipped my mind at the moment, like ruby.
As far as client side (web) programming goes, I only know of Javascript.
This forum, for instance, uses php to output html to the client's browser (well.. its not really that simple, but the inner workings come later). However I do believe the place where you enter your posts, is in javascript (to some degree, the stuff that adds in bold and links and such).
Personally I think MOST everything that one might want out of web programming can be accomplished server side, and since that guarantees a wider range of clients that can successfully view your page, that's a plus. My recommendation for a server side language would definitely be php (4 or 5, 5 preferably) as it is very well supported in commercial hosts. And as a database solution, MySQL will do you well, and I would venture to say, is the single most supported database among commercial (web) hosts.
PHP + MySQL is a very powerful combination, if you Google for php tutorials, or mysql tutorials, you'll get thousands of useful results, and if you have any sort of experience in programming, you'll pick it up in no time at all.
However if you have absolutely no experience with any sort of programming language, I sincerely suggest that you don't start with web programming. Instead perhaps something like
Python would be a good start to begin to understand programming concepts and then move into web development.
(on a personal note, you might be able to tell I'm a huge advocate of c++, c++ is a wonderful language in my opinion, and has by far the largest amount of learning resources of any programming language. There are tons of compilers available, and learning resources can be found via
http://www.google.com.
I listed a couple of free c++ compilers at:
https://www.askmehelpdesk.com/showthread.php?t=11745 the last post.
Hope that helps (I know I rambled, but it was a very broad question)
Cheers
-Dan