Creating a Mini-Community Site with HTML?

I do graphics, that's mainly what I do. I've never been taught how to code or anything.

A few days ago (in class), the teacher told us to create a small community site. The community site should consist of features like:

- Registration form (incl. captcha)
- Login box + forgot password option
- Member profile (incl. privacy settings)
- Page for uploading photos
- Photo album with privacy settings
- Profile Testimonials (visitor comment boxes)
- Invite friend feature
- Add friend to friends list feature
- etc., etc, etc.

I honestly don't know why that's what the teacher wants us to do. :( Nevertheless I'm quite excited...but I really want to know if I can use HTML (incl. CSS and Javascript) to create the entire site? Or will HTML be the wrong scripting language here?

I'm an extreme beginner when it comes to PHP, so I really want to avoid using that.

For all of the features your teacher is looking for, languages like HTML, CSS, and Javascript are not enough to accomplish this. You need a server side language such as PHP, ASP, etc with some sort of database; whether it be MySQL, MSSQL, Access, or flat file. For some tutorials on PHP/MySQL, visit http://www.php-mysql-tutorial.com/

Hope this helps.