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I'm making a website that only has text, and a small amount.
What would be a good layout for it? Should I put the text in the top left? Center screen? Somewhere else?
The site is a download verification page, a purchase verification page, or a page telling the user his action was completed successfully, etc. About images - There's no need for them.
About the layout, I'd just simply center align it horizontally. It can be on the top, or in the vertical middle as well, but I'd try to keep it symmetric. If it's a notification message it's just suppose to inform of something, so it shouldn't need that much 'decoration'.
Having said that, why would you have a whole page just for one notification? Why don't you use a dialog effect instead, opening a popup on the same page you were before? You can do this using fixed positions and a couple of lines of jQuery. If you need this to be a separate file, you can open the content of the HTML into the dialog.
Yisela makes a good point about the use of modal dialogs. Confirmations are a perfect case for contextual presentation. However, that's not always the best experience or even possible.
One other alternative to consider before settling on a new page is to load the confirmation into a relevant position on page asynchronously (ie, ajax). Content rendered directly into the page is, in many cases, more user friendly than modals.
If all else fails, sometimes a new page with very little content is the best or only way to go. Your primary concern is to make the confirming message clear, concise, and unmistakeable. Then give the user an easy way to move on to their next most likely task(s).
Your layout should use simple, spacious typography; icons or images as necessary to reinforce the action; color fields to focus attention (depending on the UI guidelines); and well organized white space to pull the user directly to the message.
As for where exactly, that's up to your page templates and the flow of your site.
