That's good. I wish I knew about perlmonks.org when I first started. Already you are on good footing.

Woaah nelly! You mean to say you are 1)learning perl; and 2)writing a new language intended to 'simplify' HTML; and 3)unleashing this new language on office workers; and 4)writing a parser for this language yourself by hand using Regular Expressions; and 5)learning Regular Expressions along the way? Please realize that such a multi-faceted plan of attack, even if not done simultaneously, smells like "biting off more than he could chew" ... This is a huge red flag.

I could use some direction......

If you really want advice on your "new simpler-than HTML" language, let others comment on that ... but you might want to explain a little more clearly what the syntax of your 'language' is, and then consider already-available options, like XML, YAML, or some other thing where you do not have to both invent the language and invent the parser yourself.

As far as advice ... (my two cents) save the perl project for your own personal exploration, and give the office workers who cannot learn HTML a 'fill in the blank' style form. You can use a Spreadsheet, or a Web-Based form, or a program like Filemaker or MSFT Access to get the information from them. Then if you really want, you can use Perl to pretty-fy the user input into HTML or whatever else strikes your fancy.