I'm gay.

It upholds the crisp simplicity that oh-so-many websites have failed to achieve in this day-and-age of the internet.

With Simplicity can come perfection. Your site certainly isn't perfect, of course, but it certainly uses simplicity nicely.

I like it ^^

Yeah it is nice and simple.
- frames are a bit old school
- white on black can sting the eyes a bit - perhaps make either the background or text a shade of grey?
- perhaps have the main body text (p.derp) a little larger, since it's meant to be read (0.8em should be fine)
- perhaps differentiate your links a bit from the title text

Okay, yeah, I suck at design, so take what you want, lol.
Random fiddling around for 2 minutes in Firebug:

I'm gay.

Xitherun Wrote:eh, yeah, but they're all I really know.

is there a newer, simple way to get the effect I want?

Just tables/DIVs typically are used these days...

no muffins!! :(

I'm gay.

Xitherun Wrote:I probably know nothing, but it seems like it'd be redundant to have multiple .html files that all have the 'banner' and sidebar, and only change the content.

That's typically what is done nowadays.  With most websites going dynamic, it's not that difficult either.
The problem with frames:
- navigating to a new page doesn't change the URL in the address bar, so a newbie wants to link someone to a particular page...
- issues with saving pages
- only part of the webpage scrolls (not typical behaviour these days)
- thing breaks if you open a link in a new tab

Xitherun Wrote:Can I have a div or table display an external .html file?

No, only frames can really do that (Javascript or server scripts don't count :P).