We never get inflamed newbies, but we occasionally get flamed
by newbies. It's an unfortunate occurance but, luckily, is normally limited to the team requests board.
Anyway, how you build your levels will often depend on what sort of game you're making. In wide, outdoor areas, matrices are your best bet - either made with one of the community's matrix-makers (I haven't tried any, so I can't suggest any), or perhaps randomly created if that would work.
As for an indoor-oriented game, you might like to use BSP, but something along the lines of static collision zones is probably more stable, if less flexible. BSP would be created in a program like WorldCraft, while the static collision method would probably need manually laying out, with either the whole or chunks of the level built in a regular 3D editor like MilkShape or 3DSMax.
If you're starting out, a matrix is probably the best idea. Matrices, although limited in usefulness, are pretty easy to use, don't need any expensive tools and have a good collision engine built in.
"I am a living, thinking entity who was created in the sea of information."