Personal Website Design and Setup

I would like to have a personal website built for me, and I would like to be walked through the process of setting it up. The website should be modern and well-designed. It is also important that the website's code be clear, because ultimately I will probably want to modify it myself. The reason I am not simply using Blogger or Wordpress or whatever is that my goal is to be able to make my own modifications and additions to my site beyond what these services allow. It might be most efficient for you to point me to other websites you've designed. I'll be relying on you to help me set up whatever I need to set up in terms of securing a domain, finding hosting, establishing site security, and whatever other things are important to operating a site but which I don't yet know about. I realize I haven't specified anything about the site's layout. Basically, I want you to tell me what I should want, because I don't have a clue what I'm doing. For reference, I am an academic and an engineer, and I am fairly skilled in Python, C++ and Fortran, but I am not familiar with any web programming languages.