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Chess is all about patterns. You don't need to study the "classical" openings or attack plans; after playing enough you start to see them naturally. All you need is to develop familiarity through practice.

Since chess seems to be a big part of everyone's life nowadays, I was wondering if anyone knew a site that offers resources for formal chess instruction.

(I know how to play chess, decently; however, I'm not familiar with the different classical openings and attack plans and such).

For a player who just wants to quickly get the main ideas behind various openings, I would suggest Chess Kids, http://www.chesskids.com/ckbook/kidsindex.htm .  Yes, it is aimed at young kids (say 10 years old), but for that reason they explain things very clearly. The writing is awful corny, but the info is fairly good.

You can play on ICC at a cost and get a coach on that site.  Or you could scout for a coach on your own, but it's VERY DIFFICULT to reach 1600-1799 elo rating without a coach.  But you can get to 1200-1300 pretty easily if you try hard enough.

You can develop a style, too-main styles include attackers, defenders, tacticians, positional players, unorthodox players, etc etc.  You can take one of these and bank off of it and start forming your own personalized chess style.

You should be playing online regularly-I recommend FICS (Free Internet Chess Server) which is free and offers a very accurate look at your chess rating (in fact, that is where I got my Class C rating of 1531).  You should also research and have a Grandmaster to relate with and to study the games of.  For example, my favorite player is Boris Spassky, the Russian World Chess Champion from 1969 to 1972 ('72 being when Fischer trounced him).  I like him (1) for his style and (2) for his good sportsmanship and friendly demeanor (i.e., he wasn't crazy).  Once you've researched some good players and found one you can stick with (in my case, Spassky), you can start studying their games.  To do this you might Google "so-and-so Annotated Games" and see what you can find.

Yes, right when I started playing chess seriously the whole world seems to have developed a much greater respect for it!  It's a marvelous and satisfying game to be a part of, and I'm sure you'll have a blast studying.

Kindest regards,
Ethan