More help on “the Loop”

I used the Loop code that you suggested to get the posts to appear within my website template, but I just kept getting, ‘Sorry, no posts matched your criteria’, even though I have two posts. Is there something else that needs to be added to the sample code you gave? Also, is there a way to pull in more than just the articles – i.e., also have the search, categories and archives buttons show up in my layout? I have read through the documentation on “the Loop”, but I am still unclear on this. Any help you could provide would be much appreciated. Thank you!