This is one way to make a basic page with menu down the left-hand side. If you want it in another position just let me know.
HTML:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Script-Type" content="text/javascript">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css">
<meta name="language" content="en">
<link charset="UTF-8" href="default.css" media="screen" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<title></title>
</head>
<body>
<p>All your body text goes here</p>
<div id="menu">
<a href="#">Links</a><br>
<a href="#">Go</a><br>
<a href="#">Here</a><br>
</div>
</body>
</html>
Then in your CSS file (default.css) you could have something like this:
#menu {
/*Put the menu at the top left of the page*/
position:absolute;
left:1em;
top:1em;
width:8em;
}
body {
/*Make sure the body doesn't overlap the menu*/
margin-left:10em;
}