The "M" Squad :: Basic HTML

Are you just getting started with your page, and you want to be totally SURE that you have the basic components of HTML mastered? Here we have outlined the the VERY beginning basics for you! These beginning tags are all explained so you can use them to set up your "canvas" for all your contents to go on! The basic HTML tags are shown (inside the black box) in a way that they would be used on a normal page. To learn more about a tag just click on it!

<html>
<head>
<title> Your Title Here </title>
<META name="description" content="Sailormoon Page">
<META name="keywords" content="Sailormoon">
</head>
<body bgcolor="ffffff" text="000000" link="0000FF" vlink="FF0000">

About the "HTML" tag

This is simple. It tells the browser that the code you are writing is HTML and not plain text or whatever.

About the "TITLE" tag

What you write inside the Title tag appears on Bookmarks, the top bar on your browser... and is mostly for people to figure out the name of your site. This is pretty obvious, ne? Well... problem was, some people we discover put HTML codes INSIDE the title tag - making things look REALLY weird! You see "<h1> My SM page </h1>" - and that's pretty funny... well, sort of.

About the "meta" tags

These tags are not necessary to have, and they are mostly for index pages. They are good for you to use in your code because they help people search for you in search engines that use meta tags. Key words and description help people find your site - more popularity for you!

About the "head" tags

YES they are necessary... they hold the title tags AND if you have any hidden javascripts they are nested inside the head tags.

About the "body" tags

Very important... they hold the major settings of your site... well, sort of important. In other words, the body tag controls the color scheme of the main parts of your page. You should ALWAYS set these colors, even if the defaults on your browser look OK. Other people with different browsers can have different default colors which could make your page not look as nice, or make it hard to read. Here are some of the components that you can control in the BODY tags.

"bgcolor" means background color, which is the background color that will show on the whole page. Even if you use an image background, you should still set this to a color that makes your text easy to read before the background loads.
"text" is the color of the all the main text. This should be a different color code than your background color, or else your text will not show up, and the page will look blank.
"link" is the color of any unvisited links. "vlink" is the color of a visited link. You should set links to a different color from your text, so people can tell where your links are. Unless you don't want them to know!

Adjusting colors

You can adjust the color of text, links, and background by adding in color="rrggbb" The "R" control how much red, the "G" control how much green, and the "B" control how much blue. You may have to change these a few times until you find a color you like. (No, I don't memorize color codes... I use a program called Crayon, which gives me the color code - you can download it at Tucows)

We remind you again to tell us what need to see! If you feel something was not covered here that should be here or if you feel that one of these could be explained better then E-mail us and tell us what you need!

Basic HTML :: Page Tips

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