Help for beginning player to start learning openings Hi and thanks in advance for any help.

Basically, I've been playing chess on and off for a long time, but only casually. Im not a beginner as such, but I only play against friends and occasional online games and never really studied chess seriously. According to Shredder im around 1200-1300 rating so nothing special.

I've never really studied openings seriously, and I've got to the stage where I'd like to try and learn a little more seriously to improve my game. The problem I have is, whilst I can play reasonably against the very common openings, I've really no idea how to play against more unusual openings. 

As a rough idea of my play at the moment, I generally play Giuoco Piano, Evans Gambit, Scotch etc type games as white, almost always 1 e4 games. As black I play the same against 1 e4 or I try and play a KID type game against 1 d4 but again when my opponent plays other types of openings I'm pretty much guessing how to respond.

Can anyone suggest how I might go about getting better at openings. Should I choose a handful of particular openings and try to find out more, or should I try and learn more about opening theory in general? Any recommended books or websites you can recommend? Any tips from when you were in my position and wanted to become better with openings?

Thanks! :)
It's important to know the main openings and their ideas, but there are some don'ts here.


Don't study obscure or excessive lines under the impression that not knowing these rare lines will result in poor play (it doesn't).
Don't study opening moves without understanding the ideas behind the moves.
Don't fall into the trap of learning hundreds of opening lines in order to gain an advantage of 0.2 pawns, only to drop a piece to a simple tactic in the middlegame. One of the best coaches in the world for beginners, National Master Dan Heisman, said:



  It does not matter who gets the advantage out of the opening if one of the players is likely to lose a piece to a simple tactic in the middlegame. Losing a piece from an advantageous position will almost always result in a lost position. So study tactics, not openings, until you almost never lose pieces to simple tactical motifs.