Your first task is to learn HTML. This markup language for web documents is of crucial importance.
Have a look around the internet and you’ll see a huge variety of different websites. Some are brilliantly designed with user-friendliness in mind, whilst others are rather shoddy.
If you’d like to have your own website – join the ranks of countless website owners and web designers! What do you need to do? Where should you start? If you’re a complete novice in this field, you’ve come to the right place!
Start by simply reading and browsing websites to learn how to evaluate and distinguish between different styles of web design. Although this may seem a little tricky at first, you’ll soon realise that building a website isn’t that difficult if you know how to go about it (just like anything else):
- Master the fundamentals of HTML;
- This is your first step towards being able to build a website yourself;
- You’ll have beautifully styled text ;
- Learn how to create colourful online shops.
Your first task is to start learning HTML straight away. This markup language for web documents is absolutely essential. To begin with, you’ll need a standard text editor to write your HTML code.
There are several free text editors available; one of the best-known is Notepad++ for Windows. Other editors for macOS and Linux will also do the job. Essentially, all you need is an editor that saves nothing but the text itself.
Learning the basics of HTML is what you need to create your own website.
The main purpose of HTML
HTML and HTML tags are, simply put, a block of text saved as a document; the browser interprets this text using the HTML format. HTML exists for providing the browser with a set of text commands for it to interpret.
The tags used in HTML documents define various elements on a web page, and the browser processes them to carry out actions such as displaying an image. The set of basic tags can be summarised as follows: the first tag is the opening tag, and the second is the closing tag, indicated by a forward slash (/) before the ‘HTML code’. Your entire HTML document will be placed within these two tags. To make text, for example, semi-bold, it might look like this: bold text rounds off the list of basic image features.
Here is an example of what this tag might look like: the differences between this image tag and the tags mentioned above are immediately apparent. There is no closing tag after the IMG tag. It does not require a closing tag, as there is nothing that needs to be placed between the opening and closing tags. However, you should note the presence of a slash before the final ‘greater than’ symbol. This is there to mark the end, a hint that this is considered to be in the correct form as far as HTML code is concerned. It’s there to satisfy the purists!
HTML document structure
Fundamental HTML structures offer an excellent opportunity to delve straight into the HTML structure. In its simplest form, the HTML structure comprises headings and body tags, which display information that does not necessarily appear immediately on the website.
Examples include CSS styles, the actual title bar (better known as the browser tab or window title) and additional metadata. On the other hand, div tags contain any information that will be displayed on the page. Examples of this might include images, text and multimedia. The body tag usually contains various elements within it. It is not uncommon to see this tag nested within a div tag that has the ID ‘heading’. The purpose of div tags is to group pieces of content so that you can move them around and style them using CSS.
Furthermore, you can place text within a div tag. You can place the first part of this text inside an H1 tag. H1 belongs to a whole family of tags – H1, H2, H3, H4, H5 and H6 – used to write heading text. H1 is the largest, whilst H6 is the smallest. By default, these create larger text, but it is up to you to style them when using CSS. If an HTML document has no CSS styling, the H1 tag will simply make the text on the page appear in bold. So-called ‘styled’ text can also be displayed in HTML documents. The standard across many browsers is to render it in Times New Roman, size 12. If you start applying CSS styles to them, the text will look much more stylish, even if you just use the default style.
Conclusion
You now have a basic understanding of HTML, and to get started, it makes sense to apply a few of the language’s fundamentals. This is your first step towards being able to build a website yourself! Of course, HTML can seem rather daunting to a beginner, but it becomes much simpler once you’ve familiarised yourself with the main tags and their structure.
This first lesson on HTML was designed to help you get used to the tags and the basic structure of an HTML document.