Recently, I had some help installing Ubuntu 10.4.1 onto my laptop. It seems to
be working fine.

I have a goal of developing a website on the laptop and from what I understand I
need Linux, Apache, Mysql, and PHP to be operational so that I can create a
website. I am not a much of a linux user so I am wondering if someone can
suggest the best and easiest way to download LAMP and make them operational so
that I can move on to creating my website?

It's pretty easy to just install apache2, mysql, php on ubuntu. In the
ubuntu server install there is a "LAMP" option, but they probably don't
have that option on the desktop install.

So, you can just go to system->administration->synaptic package manager
and search for apache2, php, and mysql, select each of them, then click
on the "apply" button to install them.

you only need those things if you want a fancy PHP website,
old fashioned websites just need an editor like NVU or Kompozer,
you have the master copy on your laptop,
then upload the HTML pages and images to a server using FTP.

If you install Apache, you can test your web page before you upload it anywhere.

if you already know HTML, PHP and SQL, LAMP is a good choice. Otherwise,
you have an enormous learning curve in front of you. You can set up a nice web
site with Kompozer, without having to get into the nuts and bolts of coding.

HTML, PHP and SQL is equivalent to learning to write programs in C...