How the hell do you tank?

Warning, this post isn't about hunters, but it does lean on my experience as ranged DPS in contrast to in-your-face world of tanking.

Part of my family of toons includes my AH pally mule who does enchanting, specifically to DE those green items that won't sell after a few rounds of listing and lowering the price.

Amava's been collecting items that require 275 enchanting skill to DE, and my enchanter was lvl 20, thus maxed out at 225 skill, and needing to level up to 35 to allow Artesian training to raise the skill max to 300.

So my Pally has been getting some play time. And the 2.3 patch changes to XP make a level in the 20's go by in about 2 hours at my pace of play on my pally, so its flying by.

On the trek from 10-20, he was all retribution since a really quick read of the talents showed that this allows for the most DPS. I have dreams of playing this guy as a tank some day (I was inspired by Amava working with a 70 pally tank and his Avenger's Shield. Just looks really cool, and seems very effective).

This weekend I quested with a guy who's main is a pally and he said I should check out protection tree.

Ok, so I looked it over and went with it. Got a nice shield and a 1H sword, applied the best enchants my 225 level would allow to all my gear.

Very nice stuff. Sure, it takes a while to kill stuff, but I feel indestructable. 3 same level enemy mobs, and my health only gets down to about half, without me healing at all during the fight. Kinda neat, plus consecrate makes the ground look nice.

Found myself in a cave with some random guy (named PizzaTheHut, which cracked me up..."You're Delicious, Boss!"), a warlock. We quested together for a bit.

Ok, so I really quick tried to think of what my job is? Hmmm, you mean I'm not supposed to stand far away and let my teammate get up close to the mob? Oh, and I'm supposed to MAKE all these guys hit me?

How the hell do you do that?

Granted, it wasn't super important because the two of us were crushing the mobs pretty quick, and we're only in our low 20's so this isn't like brain surgery.

But I was definitely in a quandry as to how to make this happen. If any of you are Paladins out there, please chime in with how I can be a better (or even passable) tank at this level (dinged 24 this morning).

Seems there's a spell that increases my threat from holy damage. Cool, I can do that with a seal or some judgement that does holy damage. Later on in the talent tree, there's a bunch of talents that increase threat output, so when I get there, I'll invest in those if they make sense.

What item stats should I be trying to stack at this point? I'm sure stamina's a good one, but what else? Strength like a warrior? Or intellect like a caster? What about +health?

What else? How do you guys do it? Its really counter-intuitive to me to be MAKING these guys hit me, when I've spent my whole WoW life avoiding hits.

So now I want to run a dungeon and try it out. I think BFD is appropriate for my level, and maybe DM. See if I really can be a tank. If for no other reason than to understand the challenges you guys face better.

Ok, sorry for the digression for all you hunters.