Suppose you want to provide some files on your web site for users to download. How can you do this? There are several ways.
Tell the user how to save a file
The user obviously has a browser and browsers know how to save files. Not everyone knows about this.
You can put a link to a file (not only to HTML files but various kinds). If the user is using Windows, he or she can right-click on the link and a box pops up offering options of what to do with this file. One option is to save it as a file on the user's machine. With a Macintosh, the user needs Option-click instead but the result is similar.
If this is what you want your user to do, put in instructions on how to do it.
As an exercise, try following the above instructions with this link, which is for a file called "publish.htm".
Compress the file
While browsers are smart, they don't know how to handle every kind of file in the world. in particular, if a browser recognizes from the file extension that a file is compressed (a ZIP file or a TAR file or some other kinds), it will not try to open the file itself. Instead it will pop up a box asking what the user want to do with it, such as save it as a file on the user's machine.
This is a good idea in particular if you want the user to have more than one file. A ZIP file can contain the compressed versions of multiple files, and it keeps track of file names and folder structure as well.
If you want to try this, you need to go learn something about file compression and perhaps download software to create ZIP files and decompress them.
As an exercise trying clicking on this link, which is for a file called "ftp.zip". The browser should offer to save it as a file. (What's in it? Who knows?)
What is the orthodox method?
The "proper", orthodox method to make files available for download is to use FTP. See the page on FTP. Briefly, this requires you to:
If you have a large number of files the user might want, this is probably the best idea.