Stupid HTML

I had changed some things on my side bar today and was all excited about it. I'm finally figuring out some of this HTML stuff, or so I thought. I actually goofed it really bad and none of the links would work, but I figured it out now. Yeah!! Now if I could just figure out how to link to things that aren't other people's pages, I might actually be making progress. Any tips on a good resource to teach myself HTML? I'm in dire need of some direction. Thanks!! UPDATE - apparently I'm just retarded and after staring at the lines and lines of HTML code I figured out what I had done wrong, - and = are not quite the same thing. Now all my links work, but I'm still in serious need of help!