Make your First Webpage

Introduction

HyperText Markup Language is used to build webpages (really!). It is easy to learn considering how much is possible while using the language. It is truly multimedia in a dazzling form. HTML can be used to add text, pictures, sound, and video to a page. It is simple enough to be used by individuals, and dynamic enough to be used by leading edge companies.

To get started making your own webpages all you have to do is copy the tags (tags look like <tag>) and attributes (they look like <tag attribute="value">) you find on these pages to any ASCII text editor program such as: Notepad in Windows, SimpleText in Macintosh, vi or pico in UNIX or Linux, or 'edit' in DOS. Tags must be in lowercase (<tag> is valid but <TAG> is invalid).

You can also use programs that have been developed especially for authoring HTML documents. Arachnophilia is a good ASCII HTML editor. When you save your HTML document make sure that it ends with either a .html or .htm extension. Once you get into the swing of things all you will have to do is type these tags into your HTML documents.

When constructing HTML documents there are certain rules that you must abide by. One of these rules pertains to opening and closing HTML tags. You must close your HTML tags in the order that you open them; to make it easier to understand here is an example.

RIGHT:
<b>
<i>
</i>
</b>

WRONG:
<b>
<i>
</b>
</i>

Your First Page

To start your document you first need to specify a DOCTYPE. There are three W3C DOCTYPE's to choose from. "HTML 4.0 Strict" is for pages with strict HTML 4.0 and Cascading Style Sheets. "HTML 4.0 Transitional" is for pages using deprecated parts of HTML 4.0 along with CSS. "HTML 4.0 Frameset" is for pages with frames. If you don't know which DTD to select use HTML 4.0 Transitional.

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0//EN">
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Frameset//EN">

The first tag to start out with is <html>. Almost all tags must be closed. The closing tag for <html> is </html>. You must use this tag to start and end your page.

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<html>
</html>

The <head> and </head> tags are used to define the head of the page. Within this tag you place the <title> and </title> tags. The title tag is used by users of your page and search engines to identify it's content. The title will usually appear somewhere on the top of the browser window.

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<title>My Very First Web Page</title>
</head>
</html>

The <body> and </body> tags enclose all tags or plain text that will be rendered on your webpage. Text within your page needs to be defined by the paragraph tag <p> and closed with </p>. If you need to "break" a line at a certain place you can use the <br> tag. The break tag is one of several special exceptions to the tag closing rule. It stands alone with no closing tag.

Here's what we've talked about so far:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<title>My Very First Web Page</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>Welcome to my very first web page.<br>
I'm going to be adding a lot so come back soon!</p>
</body>
</html>