Short answers, pulled from the story.
Hephaestus is the Greek god of artisans, blacksmiths, carpenters, craftsmen, fire, metallurgy, metalworking, sculpture, and volcanoes. He served as the blacksmith of the gods and created all the weapons of the gods on Olympus. In Rome he was equated with Vulcan.
In one branch of the myth, Hera cast Hephaestus off Mount Olympus because of his lameness, the result of a congenital impairment. In another account, Zeus flung him down for protecting Hera from his advances, and he fell for an entire day before landing on the island of Lemnos.
Hephaestus was the son of Hera, either on her own or by her husband Zeus. In Hesiod's Theogony, Hera gives birth to him alone out of revenge for Zeus fathering Athena, while the Odyssey refers to him as having two parents.
Hephaestus crafted the thrones in the Palace of Olympus, the Aegis breastplate, Hermes's winged helmet and sandals, Aphrodite's girdle, Eros's bow and arrows, and Helios's chariot. He also forged the armor of Achilles and made the first woman, Pandora, along with self-moving golden automatons.
After learning of Aphrodite's affair with Ares from Helios, Hephaestus forged an invisible chain-link net so fine it could not be seen. He caught the lovers in bed and dragged them to Mount Olympus to shame them before the other gods, who laughed at the sight.
Hephaestus is described as lame and halting and is shown with curved feet, walking with a stick or using a wheeled chair he built himself. Some scholars read his appearance as a memory of arsenic poisoning suffered by Bronze Age smiths who added arsenic to copper to make harder bronze.
Hephaestus had almost no cults except in Athens, where his temple the Hephaesteum stood near the agora. The cult of Hephaestus was based in Lemnos, an island sacred to him, and the Lycians dedicated a city called Hephaestia to the god.