quilkin:
ChrisLamont, it may not be clear to you from the above post that you may not actually need a 'basic' Arduino at all; just an ESP8266 module (like this one) could easily do all you need unless you need a lot of i/o. With that device, you won't need to worry about sending commands from an arduino board to the ESP8266 (or reprogramming the flash; the IDE will do it all for you); the ESP8266 is a microprocessor in it's own right (also has a lot more memory than most Arduinos). And there are plenty of examples of sending data from ESP8266 via wifi to a web server.
+1000
For beginners using that Adafruit module or the Wemos D1 mini Pro ( https://www.wemos.cc/ ) or others like them is so much easier.