All web pages are composed of a hidden definition language called HTML, which stands for Hyper Text Markup Language. The word "hyper" is used to indicate the nature of web pages, in that a page is made up dynamic text and graphics which, if clicked on with a mouse, lead to more web pages.
HTML is not a traditional programming language, it is a "markup" or definition language. Therefore it lacks many of the traditional programming language features, like decision making constructs, such as IF THEN ELSE. For this reason, HTML is typically easy to learn and a good point to start if you plan to learn JAVA or JavaScript programming, the standard, traditional programming languages of the web.
HTML may be easy to understand and use, but it can also be very complex when attempting to create a page that uses advanced features such as tables and frames, or anything to do with layout. Typing in the syntax of HTML can be done with a simple editor such as Microsoft Notepad or WordPad. The HTML file can then be uploaded to a web server on the Internet and viewed in a web browser, or you can view it right from your hard disk.
This is how we created web pages years ago!
Today there is an easier way, using a web page editor, a specialized program, much like a word processor. These programs are designed to generate html files from a graphical "what you see is what you get" (WYSIWYG) point of view. This makes creating web pages much easier because you no longer have to be an HTML expert with knowledge and experience with HTML details.
All you really need to know in order to create a basic web site is how to use a word processor!
For a complete reference on the HTML syntax visit http://www.w3.org/MarkUp
The following description of HTML is from the "W3" site:
"HTML is the lingua franca for publishing hypertext on the World Wide Web. It is a non-proprietary format based upon SGML, and can be created and processed by a wide range of tools, from simple plain text editors - you type it in from scratch- to sophisticated WYSIWYG authoring tools. HTML uses tags such as <h1> and </h1> to structure text into headings, paragraphs, lists, hypertext links etc. Here is a 10-minute guide for newcomers to HTML. W3C's statement of direction for HTML is given on the HTML Activity Page. See also the page on our work on the next generation of Web forms, and the section on Web history."
A web site contains several web pages linked together. A single web page with no other pages is not considered a site. To be considered a site there must be a front page, the main page of the site, with links leading to more pages within the domain.
The Basic HTML Tags
HTML tags are programming codes in the form of <...> where ... is a defined tag name. The W3 (www.w3.org) defines and sets the standard for the Hyper Text Markup Language. Tags consist of mostly "paired" tags, which means for every <...> there is a </...> which signifies the ending or closing of the tag. Typically, the text that appears between paired tags are affected in some way by the tag pair. For example: <B>This is bold text</B> means that any text between these bold tags will be darker than normal.
Today with HTML WYSIWYG editors that generate HTML tags automatically, it is not necessary to learn all the details about coding in HTML. The computer was invented to make your life easier, not to force you into being bombarded with so many details, when it is not required. However, what is required is some basic knowledge of HTML tags, and more importantly, the concept of how HTML works. Understanding the basic tags and the overall way HTML works is far more important than learning every single HTML tag.
The current version of HTML is 4.01 as defined by the W3C at http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/
Tags do not have to be in all uppercase.
Sample:
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Dutchess County Real Estate Agents</TITLE>
</HEAD><BODY>
<P>Welcome to the Dutchess County Real Estate Agents Web Site.</P>
<P>We are located at:<BR>
101 South Road<BR>
Poughkeepsie, NY 12603</P></BODY>
</HTML>
The <HTML> tag surrounds the entire page contents, and everything in between is to be read and interpreted by your web browser as HTML. All web page documents must have this tag
This tag indicates common settings for the entire page, and various other tags may appear within the <HEAD> tags. All web page documents must have this tag.
Use this tag to indicate the title of the web page document. It is very important to have a title because this is what is used by the web browser when a user adds your page to their favorites or book marks. It is not required to have this tag in your document, but it is highly recommended.
This tag surrounds the body of your document, inclosing in it possibly many more HTML tags and text and graphic image references. All web page documents must have this tag.
The paragraph tag should surround any text you consider to be a paragraph or any text that you want double line spacing between. The </P> tag causes the next line to be blank.
Break. This single code allows you to end a line of text and start a new line without the double line spacing that the <P> tag causes.
<!-- This text is a comment because it is surrounded by the "less-than" and "greater-than" signs with 2 dashes -->
The <!-- and --> tags allow you to makes comments within your HTML that DO NOT GET SHOWN on the web page when viewing with a web browser, and often even when editing with a tool such as FrontPage.
Many search engines will scan your page when you submit it for inclusion in their index. Some search engines have robot programs called spiders which do nothing but scan the web 24 hours a day, looking for new web pages to add to its index. When search engine programs look at your site, some of them look at special tags called META tags. Meta tags are single tags, as opposed to paired, and so everything in the tag is enclosed in the < and > symbols. Meta tags with the name "keywords" can contain a comma-separated list of keywords or phrases which the search engine programs look at. From this it can index your site by words that are most likely to be typed in when someone is searching for a page that has your type of content.
Create a list of key words that you feel someone would enter into a search engine to find a site such as yours, the the themes you will present. The sample above shows the <META> single tag with two name parts, "keywords" and "description". For each META name there is a content section enclosed in quotes, as shown above. The sample shows a site that is about real estate in Dutchess County New York. Notice that the keywords or phrases (more than a single word) are separated by commas. The description content is basically the same as the keywords content except it does not have the commas. Both this META tag names, keywords and description, help web search engines index your site.<HEAD>
<META name="keywords" content="real estate, agent, Dutchess County, New York, NY">
<META name="description" content="real estate agents of Dutchess County New York">
<TITLE>Dutchess County Real Estate Agents</TITLE>
</HEAD>
There are these things called "spiders" or "robots" on the web that come from the search engines, sniffing out pages all over the world wide web, constantly looking for new pages to add to the search engines. It may take a year for the robot to crawl along to your page, and that is why submitting it to a search engine makes it find it much faster. By putting the list of keywords in your main page (index.htm or index.html) the search engine will look at these words and categorize your site automatically for you.
You need to think up as many key words or phrases as you can (100 words would not be unusual), and when you can't think, just go to www.m-w.com (Webster Dictionary) and use the thesaurus. Save these words in a txt file because you never know when you may need them in other pages and this makes it easy for you to simply copy and paste them.
A detailed description of how to get search engines to find your site and
index it easily can be found at the W3 at http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/appendix/notes.html#recs
This document also describes how to prevent a search engine from indexing your
page.