Step 3: Learning the Basic format for html

**Gabe** · 08-20-2003, 01:33 AM

We will look at the main tags of the page that we created.

The < html > tag indicates the beginning of an HTML file.
The < /html > indicates the end of an HTML file. And this tag is at the end of your document.

Basically what the < html > and < /html> does is the following:

-When a browser requests your page it tells the browser "Hey, I'm an html document you can read me and please interpret the code in my document as HTML code"

-When the closing tag < /html > is shown it says to the browser "Hey that's it, no more html for you the document is done"

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The next tag is the < header > tag. In this section you can add special instructions to describe your website or add keywords so it is friendly to search engines. We will view in more details the HEADER tag in a future lesson.

The HEADER tag introduces the < title >. This tag is pretty much self-explanatory. You title your webpage here. Anything between < title > and < /title> will be the title of your website.

Then after this we have the closing < /header> tag. This basically tells the browser that the HEADER instructions are over.

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Next we have the < body > tag. This is where your content will go. This is where you will spend most of your time when creating a webpage. And the ending < /body > indicates the end of the body of your page.

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This is the skeleton of all html documents.
Whenever you see a tag with a slash in it, it is the ending of a previous tag. Some tags need to be closed others not we will see this in our next lesson.

All of tags mentionned in here need to be closed if they are not an error message will be displayed in the browser of the visitors of your website.

If you have any questions please ask....
It is important to understand this before going further because it gets trickier as we move along!

**dz_blonde_girl** · 08-20-2003, 07:41 AM

Got it! You do such a good job of explaining this stuff! Thanks!

**voodidit** · 08-20-2003, 03:56 PM

I printed this out and have it ready to go.

**heavensent_7** · 08-20-2003, 04:19 PM

I can actually understand this because I'm brave enough to do this one thing on my eBay auctions

ROFL.

I just HAD to get this in because I don't seem to understand anything else without major help LOL

**heavensent_7** · 08-20-2003, 04:20 PM

LMAO!! Ok so I did it so well it just worked

So obviously that was < p > < / p > - I'm SO glad I can do something!

**MrsGixxer** · 02-19-2007, 08:48 PM

You have great instructions. I taught myself basic/intermediate HTML and really enjoy it. I prefer it over the programs. I'll keep checking back to see if I can learn anything more.