I get asked an awful a lot what is HTML and why do I need to learn it? So I decided to put this together to some of you out there better understand HTML and why you should learn just a little of it. You don’t have to be an expert or know everything, you just need to know the basics of HTML and what it all means.

As some of you may or may not know HTML stands for Hpyer Text Markup Language, this is just a fancy way of you telling a browser what to display on the screen for the viewer.

Computers talk in what is known as Hexidecimal language, all numbers and codes. So to make it easier for everyone to understand they came up with HTML, this code interrupts the language and then translates into viewable words and pictures for everyone else out there.

There are probably thousands of ways to write HTML but you don’t have to know all this to build a website or landing page. You just need to understand what the basics are.

So, the first thing you have to do is tell the browser what type of language you are talking in, hence the < HTML > tag, when the browser sees the < character it knows to interrupt what is inside of this and put it on the screen, so you also need to tell the browser when not to do this task any longer, hence the closing tag < /HTML > ***of course there are no spaces at all when you actually write this code.

After the < html > tag you need to tell the browser what the name of your page is, < title > insert your title and put the closing tag < /title >

The next thing most people will see if they are looking at a source code of a website, is the Meta tags, these are used for a varity of reasons but mostly to help index your website pages. Such Meta tags are, description, keywords, content,nofollow, and much more. Now you don’t have to have these tags, but for search engine optimization you will definitely what your title tag, description tag and your keyword tags.

Next you need to tell the browser when to start the main part of your website < body > tag this is where all your content and pictures will be held. Now there are numerous other tags you can use inside your < body > tags to make paragraphs, page breaks, bold your text, underline your text, change the size and color of your text and much more. You can also add tables and rows within your body tag to set things apart from others, you can change the back ground of your website page, or change the back ground just within a table.

Here is just some of the tags you can use within your body tag:

< b > = makes your text bold < /b >
< U> = makes your text underlined
< p > = makes a paragraph
< br > = makes a line break – as if you hit the enter/return key on your keyboard
< bgcolor > = changes your back ground color
< table > = puts a table around your content < /table >
< font color > = controls what color your text font will be < /font >
< font size > = controls the size of your font < /font size >
< img src > = tells the browser where a picture is located so it can retrive it
< a href = > this is an anchor tag for a link, you can link words together or one word to make the text clickable by your visitors < /a href >

There are hundreds more and to learn more I’d study the information they have at W3schools this is a great way to learn and play around with HTML.

As you start to build your website you will begin to understand more and more about how to use HTML and it’s tags. I have learned it is much easier to just do it and make a few mistakes then to Never even Try!!!

I’ll be posting more here in regards to HTML and tags, so do grab the RSS feed and make sure to leave your comments and questions so I can make this a better learning place for everyone.

Laura

http://www.laurasbasicstowebdesign.com