Lesson 2

Basic HTML Commands

When you see RED text in the template boxes, substitute your text for the red text to create your page.

You will need to copy and paste your code into Notepad or another HTML editor. The resource list has links to places where you can download some of these.

Notice: "Tags" are the codes that are enclosed in the <brackets>. For every opening "tag," there is a closing "tag" that begins with a forward slash "/".... These are very important. There are a few exceptions, but they will be noted as we learn them.

Code Template

<HTML>
<HEAD><TITLE>Title of my page, will be displayed in title bar of browser</TITLE></HEAD>

<BODY>

In this space, you will include the content for your page.
If you want to use a heading, the code looks like this:
<H1>Your Heading Text</H1>

Your page text will be here. When you are done, remember, we must close those opening tags, so at the bottom of your page, you must have this code snippet:

</BODY>
</HTML>

The code above creates a page that looks exactly like this when displayed in a browser:

Obviously, not a very exciting page, but I wanted you to see the results of the actual code.

Also notice that the code tags are "nested," meaning the last one opened is the first one closed. If you mix tag order, you will have an HTML mess! So if you look, you will see that the order of closing tags is very important.
Once you have mastered the process of writing the basic code, you may be interested in adding different attributes to your text, such as: color, size, etc. If you want to play with what these different tags will do for your web page text, use the instructions HERE on an earlier tutorial I wrote.