HTML is the language that most webpages are written in. You will need a text
editor to write HTML. A text editor is just what it sounds like... a program
that lets you write and edit plain text.
If you use a
Windows computer, you can find a text editor by going to the Start menu,
then Programs,
then
Accessories, and selecting Notepad. Open your text editor (Notepad), then
copy and paste these lines into it:
<HTML>
</HTML>
These are "tags". Most tags come in pairs. The first one tells your browser to
start something. The second one tells your browser
to
stop
it.
These particular tags tell your browser to start & end an HTML document, which
is also called a "webpage". All the details of the webpage
go between these two tags.
Like human beings, HTML documents have a body with
a head at the top. The head contains information that
search engines and browsers like Internet Explorer need
to learn about your page. Place these tags inside your
<HTML> tag pair:
<HEAD>
<TITLE>type your page title here</TITLE>
The title should be no longer than 70 characters total, including spaces.
<META NAME="DESCRIPTION" CONTENT="type
a description of your website here">
The page description should be no longer than 150 characters, including spaces.
<META NAME="KEYWORDS" CONTENT="type
words that people might use to search for your page here">
For keywords, use no more than 874 characters total; much less if possible.
Type in lowercase without punctuation. Don't
repeat words more than twice, or different forms of the same word. For
example: "html tutorial tips tutorials short".
<META HTTP-EQUIV="pragma" CONTENT="no-cache">
This tells browsers to get the newest version of your page.
<META NAME="revisit-after" CONTENT="21 days">
This tells search engines that you'd like them to come back and look at your page for any changes. 21 days is the shortest period of time you can list.
</HEAD>
This ends the "head" section of your HTML document.
Notice that tag sets are mirror images of eachother. For example, <TAG1><TAG2> </TAG1></TAG2> is
wrong, because TAG1 came first, which means it should end last. <TAG1><TAG2> </TAG2></TAG1> is
correct.
The
inner
pair must be closed before you can close the outer pair.
Now you can start the document's body, which is what your visitors see:
"bgcolor" sets the page's background color. The rest of the BODY tag properties
above make sure that your webpage will start in the upper left corner of the
browser window.
<P ALIGN="CENTER">paragraph text</P>
The P tag starts and stops a paragraph. By default, paragraphs align
to the left margin. If you want your paragraph to be centered, or aligned to
the right, you can add the ALIGN property.
<P>This is a <BR>
Very short poem.</P>
The BR tag creates a line break. No closing tag is needed.
<IMG ALIGN="RIGHT" SRC="path
to where image is" width="number
of pixels the image is wide" height="number
of pixels the image is high" alt="short
description of image for the visually impaired">
Image tags also have no closing tag. The image's "path" tells a browser where
to find it. This would be somewhere in your website directory, which is
on your web host's server. For example, if
all your images are in
a folder
called images: "/images/picture.jpg".
When you're finished creating your page's content, close the tags that are still
open. These should be:
</BODY>
</HTML>
Save your document with an ".html" or ".htm" extension.
Open
your new webpage
with
your
browser
to see how it looks. When you're ready to
put your page online, your web host may specify a particular name for your main
page (also known as your "index" page). The names of the others are up to
you.
There are other HTML tags, but you can create most of what you want
with just these. When you're ready to learn more, check out Webmaster
In A Week and our HTML
tutorials.
<I>These tags display words in italics.</I>
