Jesse's Website

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Basic HTML
Tuesday, 26-Aug-2003 3:00:00p EDT

HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language. HTML is used for making web pages. HTML code is made up of elements called tags. A tag is made of a less then sign(<), followed by the tag's name and ends with a greater then sign(>). In HTML the less then and greater then signs are called angle brackets. Most tags come in pairs with a beginning and ending tag. The ending tag is the same as the beginning tag except the less then sign(the first angle bracket) is followed by a forward slash(/) then the tag name.

There are a few required tags that you use only once in every HTML document. These are the html, head, title, and the body tags. These tags must be used in this order:

	<html>
	<head>
	<title>page title</title>
	</head>
	<body>
	page content
	</body>
	</html>

You don't have to put the tags on separate lines like I did, you could put everything on one line but I wouldn't advise it because the code would be very hard to read. In the above code you'd replace page title with what you want to appear in the title bar on the user's browser. This page's title is Jesse's Website. You would also replace page content with the content of the page. The content is all the images, text, links, etc. that appear on the page.

If you'd like to try any of this out open a plain text editor, notepad will work, and type in the required HTML tags and change page title and page content to your page title and content. When entering the content you will need to use the br tag (<br>) to start a new line. If you don't all your content will be on one line.

When you are done typing everything in you will need to save it. You can name it anything you like as long as the name ends in .html. Once you've saved it close your text editor and reopen the file by clicking on it. You HTML document should now appear in your web browser.

Screen shot of HTML code typed into Notepad

Now you have created your first HTML Document. I'll teach you how to create links, add images, and change the colors in the next lesson. If you have any questions you can email me or ask them on the Message Board. My email address is jester99@foxinternet.com. Note: Your website is not yet on the internet. I'll talk about getting it on the internet in a later lesson.