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HTML Overview
Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) can be described as a set of special codes referred to as "tags," which instruct a web browser how to display a hypertext document. Think of it is as a collection of styles (indicated by markup tags) that define the various components of a web page.
All HTML documents are written in plain text (ASCII) format, making them universally readable by different web browsers running on different computer platforms. HTML tags consist of a left angle bracket (< or "less than" symbol) followed by the name of the tag and closed by a right angle bracket (> or "greater than" symbol). Most tags however, are paired, with a beginning (or open) and an ending (or close) tag. The ending tags are the same as the beginning tags except that they are preceded by a forward slash (/). A typical pair of tags look like this:
<STRONG>and</STRONG>
Each tag in a pair is placed around the text or section that you want to define ("mark up") with that tag. For example, if you want to begin a section of your document with a heading like "My First Web Page," you would use one of the six levels (sizes) of headings available in HTML and it would look like this:
<H1>My First Web Page</H1>
Every HTML document needs a title. The <TITLE> tag goes inside the document header and should describe the contents of the page. This is especially important if you are going to register your site with search engines. You can have only one title per document and it should be in plain text. In other words, there shouldn't be any tags or strange characters inside the title.
A number of characters on your keyboard are not recognized in HTML and require a special kind of markup other than a tag.
There's a wealth of information on the Internet that will explain just about anything you could possibly want to know about HTML. A good place to start is the HTML Primer.
Code Your Own Page
If after exploring some of these resources you're feeling adventurous, why not give it a whirl? All you need is a text editor like Notepad and a web browser. Compose your HTML pages with your text editor and save it as a text-only file with a .htm extension. Then open the file in your browser to see what it looks like. (Keep in mind that an HTML document may look different when viewed with different browsers.) You can go back to the original HTML file to edit it as often as you like. You'll see for yourself how simple it is.
You can download numerous HTML editors and file conversion programs from Download.com.
Good luck with your new website!
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