Internet Marketing Tools: Part Six HTML Basics

If you’re doing business on the Internet, learning some basic web design skills is an absolute must. Not only will you have the ability to create your own web pages, but you’ll also save yourself a great deal of money.

Selecting an HTML Editor

Although there are many HTML editors available on the Internet, the best editor I’ve found is “Coffee Cup.” This powerful editor is great for newbies and experienced webmasters alike. You can download a fully functional shareware version here: http://www.coffeecup.com

Web pages are created with special codes known as HTML (Hypertext Markup Language). These codes, also referred to as tags, are enclosed by the lesser than () brackets and may be written in capital or lower case letters.

The opening bracket is followed by an element, which is a browser command, and ends with the closing bracket.

Example:

An element may also be followed by attributes, which are words describing the properties of the element, and further instruct the browser.

Example:

Attributes are only contained in the opening tags to the right of the element and are separated by a space and followed by an equal (=) sign. The value follows the
equal sign and is enclosed in quotes.

Basic Document Structure

Below, is a very basic HTML document structure. It contains the opening HTML tag, the TITLE tag enclosed between the opening and closing HEAD tags, the opening and closing BODY tags and the closing HTML tag. All of your text, graphics and any additional HTML codes will be placed between the and tags.

Your Web Page Title

Each HTML tag above contains an opening tag and a closing tag. The opening tag is written with the command enclosed with brackets.

Example:

The closing tag contains a forward slash followed by the command enclosed with brackets.

Example:

The opening tag is telling the browser to begin the specified action and the closing tag is telling the browser to end the action.

The proper way to write HTML is to place your closing tags in sequence with your opening tags.

Example:

Example of the proper sequence of writing HTML

Notice that the closing tags are in sequence with the opening tags.

When you have several opening tags, the closing tags will begin with the last opening tag and end with the first. Are you totally confused now? Here’s some more examples.

This is an example of a properly written code:
Example

This is an example of an improperly written code:
Example

Creating a Basic Document

Begin writing your HTML by creating your document’s basic layout — beginning with and ending with :

Your Page Title

This area will contain everything that will be visible
through a web browser such as text and graphics.

- Begins your HTML document

- Contains information about the page such as, the TITLE, META tags for proper Search Engine indexing, STYLE tags, which determine the page layout and
JavaScript coding for special effects.

- The TITLE of your page. This will be visible in the title bar of your visitors’ browser.

Note: Make sure you include your most relevant keyword phrase within your “title” for Search Engine indexing. A keyword phrase is two or more words that best
describe your website. For example, if your website focuses on “grooming dogs” then your best keyword phrase will be “dog grooming.”

- Closes the tag.

- Closes the tag.

- This is where you will begin writing your
document.

- Closes the tag.

- Closes the tag.

Basic Text Elements

- Bold Text

Example

- Italic

Example

- Underline

Example

Color Codes

If you would like to specify a certain text or background color, you can do so by using color codes.

RGB color codes are represented as hexadecimal values. The RGB color codes contain three sets of numbers representing the amount of Red, Green and Blue contained in a color. These codes must be used within your HTML to specify your
selected colors.

Now, to put the above statement in English…if you’d like to display your text in a certain color, you must include the hexadecimal color code within your font tag. Each color has its own color code.

Here are a few of the basic color codes:

Black – #000000

White – #FFFFFF

Red – #FF0000

Green – #00C000

Blue – #0000FF

Yellow – #FFFF00

Example:

Example

You can find a 216 safe color chart here:

http://www.web-source.net/216_color_chart.htm

Creating Links

In order to navigate a web page, you must create links. Links are created with an anchor, an href attribute and a URL (Uniform Resource Locator). URL’s provide the browser with the location of the link, the name of the file and the method in which to access the file.

Example:

Link

When you begin writing your HTML code, all of your codes will be placed between your and tags, as this is the only part of your web page that will be viewed through a web browser.

You can find an HTML code chart here:

http://www.web-source.net/html_codes_chart.htm

This chart will provide you with all of the basic HTML codes, descriptions and examples to assist you in creating your web page.

Although this article provides you with a very basic overview of HTML, with the help of Coffee Cup and the HTML code chart mentioned above, you can easily begin learning how to create your own web pages.

By: Shelley Lowery

About the Author:

A website is simply a collection of ‘pages’ – files on a computer, much like an Excel or Word file might be. The extension (the bit after the dot) for a web page file is ‘html’ or ‘htm’. A web site consists of a number of.html files all linked together so that you can navigate between them.

Domain Name

The name of the site is called the ‘Domain’ or ‘url’ – (Uniform Resource Locator) and is what you have to type in at the top of the browser to access the site. You need to find one that has not been used already and register – you use a ‘Domain Registrar’ to do this for you. Tell them the domain name and extension you want, they check that it is available and, if it is, they reserve it for you.

In reality, you need to purchase the domain name first – it would be a shame to build the whole web site and then discover that the phrase that you desperately need has already been taken!

Web Hosting

When you build a site, the files sit on your PC or Mac but no one else can access them, so you need somewhere the public can see them. You need is ‘Web Hosting ‘. This is simply an area on a computer that is attached to the internet where you store the files that make up your web site. You rent this space by setting up a ‘Hosting Account’ – they will charge to give you space on their big computers (servers).

So you now have a web site, a domain name and a hosting account, but your web site files are still sitting on your PC. You need to copy them to the space allocated by your Hosting supplier on their servers. You need to do something called ‘ftp’ which stands for ‘File Transfer Protocol’ using some sort of ftp utility programme. I use an Open Source tool (which are free) called FileZilla.

Do you now have everything you need? Well not quite, because there is a vital part missing and it seems to be the part that confuses people most. This is called the ‘DNS’.

‘DNS’ or Domain Name System

What DNS’ing does is to make sure that the domain name points to the space on the server where you put your web site files. The domain name is like a telephone number in the directory – it is just a number until it is actually routed to your home. DNS’ing is how you route the domain name to the server at your hosting company, so that Google knows where to go to load the web site files. This is done using something called a ‘name server’.

Name Servers

When you create your hosting account, the hosting company will send you details of their ‘name servers’. You need to tell the registrar who registered your domain name these codes so they know where the domain name should point. For example, I use HostGator for my hosting and they have allocated name servers of ‘ns1409.hostgator.com’ and ‘ns1410.hostgator.com’. I logged in to the account which holds my domain names and amended the DNS settings for each to point to the name servers HostGator sent me.

If you have hosting with the same company as you have used to register your domains, you do not need to do this step, as they will do this for you.

And finally, you need to wait a while – 24 hours or so – before the changes get passed around the internet. When you type your domain name into a browser and your page appears on the screen, it is ready!

By: Neil Lawson

About the Author:

If you want to host your web site then you have two choices.

1) Dedicated Web Hosting

2) Shared Web hosting

Dedicated web hosting is costly but you get a full control of your server. Shared hosting is cheap but you share CPU resources with many other web sites.

How Much Each Web Host Costs?

You can get dedicated website hosting at $100 to $200 per month charges. If you are just starting out your online business, this is very high amount.

You can get shared hosting at just $3 to $9 per month. Shared hosting is very cheap because all CPU resources are shared among many clients.

How Much Secure Each Hosting Is?

Well, dedicated website hosting is much more secure than shared web hosting. If any site on shared sever is hacked then it can affect other web sites too.

In dedicated website hosting, you have full access for your server. So that reduces the chances of being hacked due to other people’s mistake. Although if you have very bad luck then dedicated server can also be hacked but chances are less compared to shared web hosting.

Access Level

In shared website hosting, you can’t get full access of your server. In dedicated hosting, you have full access of your server. You can do whatever you like with dedicated hosting.

Getting full access to the server is beneficial as well as harmful also. You can mess up all setting by mistake if you have full access. You cannot do such stupid thing in shared web hosting.

I personally don’t like the dedicated hosting due to its price. I believe it’s not worth. I have seen many high traffic web sites on the shared hosting. So don’t assume that if you have high traffic then dedicated hosting is the only solution.

By: Dhruv Patel

About the Author: