Help with starting a new webpage(forum, dynamic foto gallary, 2 URLs on 1 ftp)

I’m graduating this summer and so I’m making a website for me and my friends to stay in touch. Now I know how to make flash but I don’t know anything about HTML or pretty much anything else.

First of all, can I get a 2nd URL on the FTP that I already have? if so, how would I go about in doing that? I mean, since the “index” html document is the one always loaded first(as I understand it?) how would I go about making 2 indexes? Can you make it in a subfolder and then force the new URL to read the index from that?

And then I’d like to get a forum. I have no idea on how to go about this, I asume that its you can get a free that works reasonably well, any recomendations?

I’d also like to ask if anyone know of any free/cheap software that can compress/lower the resolution of multiple pictures all at once? I’ve got like 600+ I’d like to put up there, so it’d be quite a project to compress them all manually.

And finally, coding a dynamic photo gallery is far beyond my own AS skills. I saw a couple of great photogalleries on this forum a month or so ago in some sort of competition. Are those open source? If not, where can I get one? Or alternativly, a link to a reasonably simple guide on how to make one yourself. If I could get ahold of one that you can comment on each picture aswell that would be so great.

Any help here is really appriciated! Thanks!