Welcome to the site

Welcome, @garymorris ! I’d definitely say the forums here are a good start. There’s all kinds of different hobbyists around here from painters, to collectors, to gamers of all breeds. Feel free to ask some questions even on this post and I’m sure someone will either have some advice on a given topic or know someone else who does! I play Bolt Action and 40k, myself, and while I’m not the best at the games, I can lend a hand where possible.

Welcome there @garymorris and we are all learning all the time.

Good place to start of understand the 40K hobby is the Warhammer stores or your Local Friendly Gaming Store. There are also clubs too, you have STAGs in your area, Facebook link, and their website is here. Might be worth reaching out to them other than that here, shout out your questions and we are good at trying to answer them.

Depends what your after…

you will find a wealth of painting, terrain and general hobby materials here, although less on 40k tactics, strategy and rule discussion, a lot of the other 40k specific forums and sites i find to be less friendly and obsessed with minutia of tournament winning army lists which is of no interest to me (or 99% of people who would never enter a tournament anyway).

Miniwargaming is more 40k focused than OTT, and was quite welcoming to newbs last time i checked it out.

The best advice i can give though is: It doesnt matter what other people think as long as your having fun and enjoying your self, no rule is more important than to have fun, if the rule as written isnt fun, change it and have it as a house rule (just like double word score for a rude word in scrabble), if you dont enjoy painting dont wind your self up thinking i must paint them just assemble the minis and play, conversely if the game leaves you cold but you enjoy the hobby side of things concentrate on that 🙂

Welcome to the hobby!

p.s. The other rule is the rule of cool, if you think it looks cool then it is, if it isnt officially part of your army or game but looks awesome use it regardless as long as your opponents agree (which leads onto proxying, which when you want to try a unit but dont actually own one, in your situation buckets of green soldiers, lego and playmobile people make excellent reinforcments to each side in the starter box), just be carful slavishly following that rule can get expensive 😉

I actually know one or two of the guys at Miniwargaming and, like @timchubb says they are big on 40k content, though they do tend towards to competitive a little more with much of their content (though that is more to do with their general viewer base, I find). They do have some great enthusiasm, though, and their battle reports are quite useful for learning what does what in a game (something I struggle with even after 13+ years playing the damn game! :P). They also do quite a bit of ‘game exploration’, for want of a better word, with their custom campaigns, which is nice for ideas and such. They are also quite into Age of Sigmar (at least the guys I know are) so they have some of that on their channel and website, too. All in all, they focus on the Games Workshop titles, but still a nice place to go if you just want a feel for some of the games.