I have dabbled in HTML and succeeded in creating a few linked pages with pictures and text
Creating entire websites from scratch with nothing but a text editor is very retro. And for a webmaster newbie like you, it's a process to be positively avoided because the results will look and feel very much retro too ....
Either get your hands on a good WYSIWYG editor (e.g. Adobe Dreamweaver), or if you insist on hacking away by hand, do yourself a favor and start with some well designed templates that suit your tastes.
Other than that, Google is your friend, there's more than enough "granny suck eggs" material .... otherwise try your local bookshop/Amazon. Not that I don't want to be helpful, but there is so much to teach you and so little space in which to do so here on PPRuNe.
