Writing HTML looks pretty painful unless you had an HTML cognizant editor. However, there are a number of other way to input information to the web, namely via filters from existing Word Processing and Desk Top Publishing systems into HTML. Filters exist for LaTeX and Framemaker. Filters also exist that will take back end languages like postscript and RTF and generate reasonable HTML from them.
There is no protocol as such for putting information into the web. It is loaded in by whatever means your particular server has for adding data. Usually this is simply by means of storing the pages in a filesystem either at the server machine or network accessible via a shared network file system.