Welcome to the forum and to Islam.
I've looked for some rulings on making shahada online, but can't find anything. In my own personal experience, as soon as I was convinced that Islam was true, I made shahada in front of Allah (swt), no witnesses. I practiced Islam and about a year later, I made shahada again at al Azhar University in Cairo, and got a shahada certificate to prove that I was a muslim (which is a good thing to have if you want to make hajj or umrah). However, I made it clear to them that I was already a muslim, and that the paper was to commemorate my shahada, not to declare it.
Oddly enough, when I got married, the imam made me make shahada again - sigh - despite the fact that I'd been a muslim for years and years.
One thing I've realized is that if you're a convert, you'll be making shahada forever, ha. People will be like, you're muslim :eek: do you pray, do you fast? what's the shahada?
Some reading for you:
How to Convert
How I learned to pray - I ok-ed this method with a shaykh at al Azhar. It's best to make salat in arabic, and this way, I learned what i was saying in arabic while i was learning the arabic as well
There are two different acts of worship in Islam that are translated as prayers in english - salat and dua. Salat the link that was given to you earlier, and what I linked to above. It's more of a ritual worship than what westerners think of as prayer in the traditional sense. It's kind of like a mini service 5 times a day.
The other kind of prayer, dua, is probably what you're more familiar with. This is where you ask God for things, thank Him and praise Him. There are some dua that were said by our Prophet (saws) that muslims do memorize, but you say whatever you want in your duas, in english.
This page has a lot on dua.