There are a few basic things you need to know before starting your site. First is the concept of tags. These are commands that are encompassed in < and > brackets. They tell the browser basic information about the webpage, and instructs how things are supposed to be viewed. Tags are often used in pairs: one tag to define and initiate a command (<command>), the other to tell the browser to terminate that command (</command>).
The first pair of tags that you must always use in HTML coding is:
<HTML> </HTML>
This tells the browser the beginning and ending of the page. All the rest of the content goes between these two tags.
| TAGS: | Significance: |
|
<HEAD> </HEAD> |
The symbols which initiate and terminate the heading. |
| <TITLE> ... <TITLE> | Puts the name of the page (typed between the tags) in the title bar of the browser window. |
| <META ...> | META tags. These do not require termination tags. There are several that you can use. I will only name a few of the more commonly used ones here. |
| <META NAME="Author" CONTENT="Your Name"> | Tells the browser who the author of the page is. Insert the webpage creator's name in the "Your Name". |
| <META NAME="Description" CONTENT="Type a short description of your page here"> | This tells search engines and the browser what your page is about. Most search engines, when they list your site will display the description underneath the title of your page. So, make it nice! It could be an advertisement for your page. |
| <META NAME="Keywords" CONTENT="Insert keywords here, separate different keywords with commas"> | These are the words that a search engine will look through when searching for specific words or phrases specified by a reader. Basically, type in whatever topics you think your page will fall under. You can put as many as you want. |
The next set of tags you must use are <BODY ...></BODY> tags.
There are extremely important, since they tell the browser where your actual webpage content begins and ends. If you don't use these tags, nothing will show up on your page! If nothing else is put in the defining <BODY> tag, the browser will use the individual reader's default settings to display your page (generally, a white background, black text, blue links and red visited links). If you want to personalize the look of your page, you can change the colours of your page by inserting directions in the defining tag. This will be covered in the next lesson.
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Read the next lesson: How to change the colours of your website.