These are two websites that any web designer should have bookmarked. They are considered to be the standard in basic training for web design. They focus on being compliant with web standards (a big issue with new web designers).
There is also a heavy focus on CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). CSS is now the standard for organizing your design styles, and if you don’t know it, you should learn it. It’s not hard to do if you already know how to style individual elements on the page.
Also, don’t use templates anymore. You can can handcode it yourself. Yes you can, don’t look at me like that, you can! If you do, you will end up with a much cleaner site all around.
As for design, look at sites you like, and compile a list of them. If you have someone doing your graphic work for you (which I suggest) show them the sites you like. It helps tremendously to have that reference.
Well, I could go on and on, but that should be enough to chew on for now!