| HTML For Beginners |
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HTML – Hyper-Text Markup Language is the predominant scripting language for web pages and is simple enough that you can build it in Notepad. It provides a structured form of displaying text information in a web browser using tags which are surrounded by <> brackets. You can create a simple web page using these tags, or a complex site involving hundreds of lines of code.
There are no costly programs involved in developing a web page in HTML, and with your WebFarm hosting account you are provided with a free shopping cart that can be integrated into your HTML website as well. So have a read, check out the links, and give HTML a go!
Introduction to HTML
First, you need to create a file on your computer to store everything the website needs. Start on your desktop by right-clicking your mouse and selecting ‘New’ and then ‘Folder’. You will then be asked to name this folder. You’ll want to choose a name that is related to your website, for example ‘my website’. You have now created your website’s top level ‘local’ folder. This is where you will add files (such as text, images, blogs, forums, shopping carts,etc) that will be displayed on your website.
Inside this folder follow the same steps as above, but this time when you choose ‘New’ choose ‘text document’ and name this ‘index.html’. Important: Your computer will warn you that this may cause the file to become unstable – choose ‘Save’ anyway. You have now created your first webpage, although it is missing content for now. You may also wish to create an images folder as well inside the ‘my website’ folder. This is where your images can be stored and where your web pages will draw the images from to be displayed.
Learning The Code
All HTML documents have a few required tags. A tag defines how the browser will display your web page. An HTML coded website will contain the following HTML tags in order of sequence as a bar minimum.
<html> <head> <title>My Homepage</title> </head> <body> Enter your text here </body> </html>
The starting <html> tag opens your code and the closing </html> tag ends the document. Directly after the opening HTML tag is the head <head> tag, followed by <title> tags which name the document and are closed by </title></head> tags. Please note: HTML is not case sensitive, so <TITLE> is the same as <title>.
The most important tags are the <body> tags which go right after the closing </head> tag. This is where the bulk of your website goes. The closing </body> tag tells the document where to end and goes right before the closing </html> tag. All the information displayed on your web page will be put between the body tags.
To edit your web page right click on the ‘index.html’ and choose ‘Open With’ > ‘Notepad’. This will open your web page with Notepad and allow you to add your html code. Try using the code above as an example. Once you’ve entered code, you can view it in your browser while editing by double clicking the ‘index.html’ file and this will open your web page in your default browser. Please note that to view any changes made, you will need to save the Notepad document and refresh your browser.
Now that you have the very basics of HTML sorted have a play around with the following websites which go into much more detail on coding and the different tags you can use.
Click here to see what a complete novice was able to produce in a little under 4 hours using HTML, following helpful links and referring to the detailed instructions for WebFarm Shop.
From here, we recommend that you visit the following sites to learn techniques such as paragraphs, colours, tables, images, forms, etc.
HTML coding links
Once you have built your website you will want to make it live on the Internet. WebFarm has a number of plans to meet your E-commerce goals and our sales team is happy to help you choose the right plan for you and provide you with detailed instructions on how to upload your WebFarm hosting account. Please feel free to contact us at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .
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