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Newbies section > Why you need your own website > Basics of html Basics of HTMLThe acronym HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language. Knowing the basics of HTML is a huge help when you are designing and building your first website. Rather than go into detail we will just tell you enough so you can grasp the general idea and then give you some links you can use for more information. For things to work on the internet, everyone has to agree to use certain standards when building their web sites. You have probably noticed that files on your computer have an extension after their name. For example, a file called "mygrocerylist.txt" has the extension ".txt" to identify it to your computer as a text file. In just the same way, files that are intended to be viewed with a web browser have the extension ".html" or ".htm" to show that this is the case. This tells the browser that when loading the file into your browser, it has to watch for instructions as to just how it is to display the content on your screen. Does it need to show a background colour? Where on the page is the data to be located? What size and color of text should be used? Here's some sample html code that will quickly show you how this works in practice <html> this first line tells the browser that html instructions follow <P> we want to start a new paragraph we put in some content here </P> This is where this first paragraph ends <P> we want some more content in a new paragraph </body> tells the browser that no more content </html> tells the browser we are at the end of the html file Much of what you need to do only requires you to learn a few simple commands to type into any text processor, such as NotePad. Each command is enclosed by these diagonal brackets... <>. When you want the browser to stop using the command you simply repeat it, but with a </... > around it. HTML is a powerful tool. Refinements include the ability to insert javascript, or to incorporate CSS and new features are being added at a regular rate. It has lots of commands, but you really only need to know a few basic ones to build a passable web page. An important part of any web page is the area between the opening <html> and <body> commands. This specific section is always used to enter things such as keywords, page description and author. This information is sometimes used by search engines for indexing purposes, and there are special commands called 'metatags' which are inserted here. Read on for some basic website design principles to keep in mind | ||
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