I think I have a basic understanding of what shared web hosting is. My question now is, is it a good idea for me just starting out? It seems like it would be less expensive. Are there any other pros to shared web hosting? What about the drawbacks?

For someone just starting, and not only, shared hosting is the way to go. If you need only a small percent of the computing capacity of a server, there's little reason to go dedicated, unless your application is very critical in nature, and having server neighbors is completely undesirable (mostly for security reasons).

Absolutely go with shared hosting unless you specifically need dedicated or VPS which is actually the next logical step, for reason that idcdc mentioned.

Other reasons to go with a VPS or dedicated may be the need for a large amount of file space or bandwidth, the necessity to load a non-standard program, the need for shell access.

If you'd like to get some experience with Linux and server administration and you have a computer laying around unused you can load Fedora core on it and gain that experience.

There's quite a bit that you can do with shared hosting and even more with your computer, so it'll be some time before you need a VPS or dedicated.

Go with shared to save money at the start. Upgrade later to VPS or Dedicated if you need to. No reason to buy the house if you only need one room to put all your stuff in