How to style posts on custom made theme?

i supose that you have read these:

http://codex.wordpress.org/The_Loop_in_Action

http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags/the_time
http://codex.wordpress.org/Formatting_Date_and_Time

and that you had a look into the code of the default theme.

both resources are always good if you want to know how it is done.

with this information you should be able to do what you are planning.

here is a general idea what i would have in the loop:

<div class="post post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">
<div class="date"><?php the_time('F j, Y'); ?></div>
<h2><?php the_title(); ?></h2>
<div class="entry"><?php the_content('read more..'); ?></div>
</div> <!-- closes .post -->
<div class="divider"><img src="<?php bloginfo('template_url'); ?>/images/blogdiv.jpg" /></div>

surely you can figure out yourself how to do the css.

what to add to/include in my index.php that would create a link between my theme and my stylesheet

as before, i would like to point to the default theme as a source of inspiration and code snippets.

following line is in header.php of most themes:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="<?php bloginfo('stylesheet_url'); ?>" type="text/css" media="screen" />

http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/bloginfo

also, changes in the style.css sometimes don’t get visible in the browser, without clearing the browser cache by pressing ‘reload’ button, or by pressing CTRL and F5 at the same time.