HTML: THE BASIC STRUCTURE

< html >

< head >
< title > Creating a Web page </title >
< meta name="description" content="A community activity to teach beginners how to create their own web page" >
< meta name="keywords" content="creating, webpage, beginners, lessons" >
< /head >

 

< body >

This is where you present your content
< /body >

< /html >

HEAD

         The head section will not show in your webpage. It is meant for search engines to find your site in the Web. You may not know much about search engine, but you must have heard of Yahoo, Excite, Infoseek, Lycos, etc. These are portals (a special type of website) which specialise in helping the general public find the web page they are interested in.

         If someone wanted to learn how to create a web page. They can go to a search engine portal and (using his common sense) type the key words like creating, webpage, lessons and ask the engine to locate the site, sort of a directory help. It will show a listing of all sites related to such activities available in the web. Most likely a few hundreds of them. If you do not include the head section in your program then they will not be able to find you.

         Beside writing the head section in your program you must also approach the search engines to include your webpage in their directory. Otherwise the general public using the particular search engine will still not be able to find your web page. In most cases the search engine will be too willing to do so for you. After all this is part of their business plan. More comprehensive their search directory, more user, so more demand for advertisement.

BODY

The body is where you write your content. The pair of < body > < /body > tags will dictate the appearances of the page. This is done by the following attributes.

Attributes
  • Left Margin: LeftMargin=" ? ",    ?    is an pixels
  • Top Margin: TopMargin=" ? ",    ?    is an pixels
  • Background: Background=" ? ",    ?    is an image link. It will fill up the background of the entire page by "tiling", that is by repeating itself.
  • Background colour: bgcolor=" ? ",    ?    is a Color Code
  • Text color: text=" ? ",    ?    is a color code
  • Link color: link= ? ",    ?    is a color code. The text marking the link will take this color.
  • Active Link color: alink= ? ",    ?    is a color code. The text marking the link will change once you click onto it. This is just to let you know that the computer is trying to find your link.
  • Visited Link color: vlink= ? ",    ?    is a color code. The text marking the link will change to this color after a viewer had clicked onto the link.
Example:
<body bgcolor="#ffff00" text="#333300" link="#006600" vlink="#339966" alink="#cc0000" >

         Please refer to the DIRECTORY for all the tags you will require to write your program. It is very easy to follow as the terms are accompanied by illustrations. The directory will be updated from time to time to make it as comprehensive as possible. If you cannot find what you need please email me so that I can add it into the directory.