I want to learn how to set an image into the background so I can place text or other html over the top of it - can anyone help me with this?

You would be best to use CSS.

You can apply the image to your body tag like so:

body {
     background #fff url('/path/to/image.jpg') no-repeat 50% 0;
}

You can either put this is a CSS file and include it into your HTML file:

<link href="style.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">

or place it withing <style type="text/css"></style> tags in your head section:

<style type="text/css">
body {
     background #fff url('/path/to/image.jpg') no-repeat 50% 0;
}
</style>

This is the full declaration for the background property, if you would rather keep it to "standard" and not shorthand you will need to apply each part seperatly:

body {
     background-color: #fff;
     background-image: url('/path/to/image.jpg');
     background-position: 50% 0;
     background-repeat: no-repeat;
}

As you can see, the best method is the shorter one.

Just to add that you can also apply the above CSS to any div in your code.

http://www.w3schools.com/css/pr_background-image.asp