NNH Internet Archive - More HTML Basics - How To Start Building A Web Page

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More HTML Basics - How To Start Building A Web Page

If you read the last issue of this article you should now
have the basics of a web page template, very plain but a
good starting point.

If you did not read the last issue you can still read it HERE

As you will probably have realised, and judging by my mail
box many of you did. The text in your web page is very plain,
this is because we have not yet told it to be otherwise.

Because of the nature of HTML and cross platform
compatibility, you have to tell it to be exactly what you
want it to be.

If you want it to be bold or in Italics you have to tell it
to be so. Even if you want to start a new text line you have
to tell it to do so!

Start by opening your web page in your Internet browser and
go back to the 'view source' option, as detailed in the last
article. This will open your source code and from here you
will be able to make the alterations to your web page.

Lets start with changing the page colour. The background
colour instructions to the browser are contained in the
'<BODY>' line tag and you will need to add the following to
this line:
<BODY BGCOLOR="#ffffff">

The #ffffff instructions are the colours, this one is white.
To alter this to other colours try some of the following.
#004040 = Black
#0000ff = Blue
#ff0000 = Red
#009900 = a nice Green colour!

Remember, once you have made an alteration to your source
code, you must save the changes and then refresh/reload your
browser window to view them.

And naturally if you have changed the background colour you
will need to change the text colour from the default so that
you can see it:
<BODY BGCOLOR="#ffffff" TEXT="#000080">

This one #000080 is navy blue. You can use the numbers above
for the text also. So now lets start with our first text
line and add a title. Remember you have to tell it to be the
title so start with the following.
<H1>This Is My First Web Page<H1>

You will notice that this is in bold as it is a title.
Additional headings would be <H2> etc.

Now the body text
<P>This is my first web page<BR>
If this works it is a miracle!</P>

<P> = Paragraph, open and closing tags. <BR> = a line break.

A few simple tags for you to remember and don't forget they
all require a closing '/' in the closing tag.

<STRONG> = Bold Text
<I> = Italics
<U> = Underlined

Your web page should now look something like the following;

<H1>This Is My First Web Page</H1>

<P>This is my first web page<BR>
If this works it is a miracle!</P>

<H2><U>About My Web Page</U></H2>

<P>If I have got this far I must be a genius<BR></P>
<P><STRONG>No, but you have <U>potential!</U></STRONG></P>

</BODY>
</HTML>

So that's it, a good basic guide to HTML. We may follow these
articles up with others but for now I hope this has given
you some understanding of the complexities of building a web
page. More information can always be found on the Internet,
just do a search for 'HTML tutorials' on any good search
engine such as AltaVista.

To run a successful web site you DO need to understand how a
web page is designed because at some point you are going to
need to edit those pages manually, if only to include banner
ad or page hit counter coding.

I would not recommend any businessperson to go to the
trouble of learning HTML in the year 2000 though, you will
find learning French or German of more use.

There are now programs on the market called WYSIWYG ('What
you see is what you get') editors, and these are better
suited to busy business use. Two we recommend to our
customers are Microsoft FrontPage and Adobe PageMill. They
are not the easiest of programs for the beginner to master
but once mastered they are relatively easy to use.

What I would recommend though is that; if you want to have a
web site and update it yourself then get an original
designed by a web page designer. That will then give you a
professional looking template from which you can update or
add additional pages to. If your designer will not let you
do this then find another one - this is year 2000 not 1995!

A big mistake for any business to make is to launch a web
site that is not finished or unprofessional looking. This
will do your business more harm than good. Visitors never
return to poor quality web sites, their memories are very
long, and remember this is your business not a home page for
your pet cat!

NNH.co.uk offers various web packages from designing a site
through to hosting it with the technical support available
for you to make updates yourself. E-mail us at:
sales@nnh.co.uk for further details or visit some of the
following sites:
http://www.nnh.co.uk/net/ Web Design Packages
http://www.nnh.co.uk/nnh_host/ Business Quality Web Hosting

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