Best Website Manual.com

Basic HTML Coding

Beginner's Guide

Banish the Mystery of HTML Tags!

Most web editors such as FrontPage, DreamWeaver and XSitePro enable you, a beginner, to build a website, even if you have absolutely no knowledge of even basic HTML coding or if you confuse HTML tags with a game!

However, if you intend to be a serious online marketer and manage your websites without spending a fortune on web designer fees, remaining ignorant about basic HTML coding (or what HTML tags are) is not an option, particularly when there is there are excellent HTML video guides and tutorials available.  HTML is so simple to learn and understand, and equally easy to implement, that you will be amazed at how quickly you can pick up and master basic HTML coding - in a matter of minutes, in fact, - IF you choose the right HTML guide.

First of all, avoid spending your hard-earned cash buying books like an idiot's guide to HTML coding or anything similar.  I find these types of books much more useful for sending me to sleep on nights when I have bouts of insomnia!  If you're anything like me, you'll be easily phased by the theory and then, yet another largely unread book will adorn your already overstacked bookshelf!  Instead learn from my painstaking research and visit sites that will not only teach basic HTML coding in simple terms, but they will, also, provide you with practical examples such as building a web page, step-by-step, as the codes are introduced to you.

Why Learn About HTML Coding or HTML Tags At All?

You don't have to - if you have money to burn and you can call on a web designer every time you run into difficulties while designing a web page!  If you want to be "hands on" with your website business, then a little knowledge about HTML codes will help you a great deal and save you time and money!

How?

If you have tried building a web page using Composer or any of the WYSIWYG web editors already mentioned on this site, you will know that sometimes you type the text to appear in a certain place or in a certain style (left, right, centred, bold, red, large, small, etc) but it fails to behave.  And what is worse, you just cannot fathom why that is!  So you highlight the text and click, again, on the "centre" icon, for example, but the text stubbornly refuses to move from the left margin!  You do this a few times,  but, still, no luck!  By now you're tearing your hair out and expletives are fouling up the air.  Right? 

Well, if you knew just a wee bit about HTML coding, and you were to click on the "HTML" or "Source" tab of your WYSIWYG editor, you'd be able to see the problem, immediately, and put it right in seconds!

Let me give you a few examples of basic HTML code.  I'll keep it simple because the sites I'm about to recommend will give you the full works and do so more effectively than I have room to do, here. 

You will have heard about HTML tags but may not know what they mean.  Put simply, they are opening and closing codes between which your web page text appears, be it heading, sub-heading, body text, etc. 

Not all opening tags require a closing tag but most of them do.  For example,

<align center> does not require a closing tag

<b>making the text between the two tags bold</b>

<p>to indicate a new paragraph start and finish</p>

<font size="4">text between these tags would be in the font size selected</font>

Or your main heading (otherwise known as "h1"), "My Ultra-Cool Website", for example, would look as you had typed it on your web page.  But if you viewed the "Source" or "HTML" tab of your page, your heading would be "sandwiched" between the opening and the closing HTML tags, thus <h1>"My Ultra-Cool Website"</h1>. 

Now suppose, as a complete novice at HTML, you type away on your WYSIWYG design page and finish your long sales letter or article, but when you preview your work before uploading it, you notice that the entire text is in mega large text which you had intended just for your heading "My Ultra-Cool Website".  I speak from bitter experience, pre-HTML tuition!  

If you knew just the basics, you would be able to see (via HTML/Source tab) that the closing tag of your heading instruction, </h1>, was missing from the end of your heading.  On further investigation, you'd find that the missing closing tag was, instead, at the very end of your entire web page! 

How could that happen?  Very easily.  Editing your heading and/or your first paragraph before the rest of your web page is created can, sometimes, result in the closing tag being moved inadvertently away from its rightful location!  A few seconds deleting the offending tag at the foot of the HTML/Source page and scrolling up to the end of your heading and typing in </h1> immediately next to the last letter of your heading, would convert the body text to the size you had intended it to be.  Job done and sanity restored! 

So Where Can You Go For Help?

You'll be pleased to know that there are several sites that offer FREE HTML tuition. Whilst you may have come across one or two similar sites, I'm recommending Newbies Paradise.com because, unlike most other sites of this kind, this site is uncluttered, navigation bar is simple to follow and you can spend as much or as little time as you want to learn what you need to know. And the tutorials are all FREE!

You don't get an ebook to download (I dare say, they may be a number that provide ebook tutorials but I haven't come across any that are, in my view, any good or as easy to follow).  Everything you need to know about basic and not-so-basic HTML coding is on the site, itself.  The lessons are clearly displayed under suitable headings and any newbie to HTML would come away from each session having the mystery that most of us associate with HTML, removed once and for all! 

If, however, you prefer to learn HTML coding by watching an expert in action, then you'd go a long way to find something as good as KillerSite.com  which is a site that I would strongly recommend. Coming across it after several weeks of scouring the internet was such a relief because it is a known fact that people learn more quickly with audio visual aids, such as video, than they do by reading the information on a printed page or online.

The author has three main categories of video tutorials - "Beginners Web Design" (using HTML), "Beginners Dreamweaver" and "Beginners Flash". On each of these three topics, there are FREE sample videos that you can watch.  The sample videos for Beginners Web Design, alone, were very helpful to the extent that I had one of my "flashing light bulb" moments! Later, I returned to the site to purchase the full videos of all three products.  If you choose to follow suit, you will be more than pleased with your investment because the material is good and you can refer to any aspect of HTML by reviewing the videos as and when you need to do so. Furthermore, you can always email the author to ask questions that concern you.  I've found him extremely helpful and prompt in his responses.