A Simple HTML Definition

A simple html definition - html stands for hypertext markup language and it's a text file that is used to build a web page. It's a set of instructions that describe the structure and content of a web page through elements called tags.

Even if you use a content management system that creates all the html for you, it's a good idea to understand html basics so you can see how the internet works and to troubleshoot. You never know how it may come in handy.

How a Website Comes to Your Computer

Your computer makes a request called "Hypertext Transfer Protocol" - http - which is a set of standards and rules that govern the transfer of data between devices like your computer or cellphones and the remote computer that stores the website data you want to see. That's called the web server, also known as the web host. It takes the html and interprets it and sends it back to your computer so you can see it as a live web page.

Best web building practices are to create a folder on your desktop that will contain all the pages and graphics you need to build your web pages. This is your "root folder". When you're ready to upload your files to your web server, it will be easy to find and do.

HTML Tags

Container tags are just what they sound like; they contain the content that will be affected by that element. For instance, if you want part of your sentence to be in bold type like this, you would start your sentence with the opening tag for "bold" and end it with the closing tag for "bold".

Non-container tags are used for attributes of the content like background color, divisions within the page, height, and width of an element. Those are just few examples of attributes.

Here is a reference you can download and use for building a basic web page using html code.Click here to download.

Creating Your Web Page

If you write your page in Microsoft Word, you'll have to deal with all the automatic formatting so better to do it in a basic word processing program. Notepad++ has some great features like color coding to help you organize your tags and pages better than the original Notepad.

Save your document in the special folder that you created for all your website content. Use the rules of lowercase and one word file names. Numbers, underscores and hyphens are ok to use but no spaces, special characters or capital letters. In the "file type" bar, save it as a "Hypertext Markup Language" file.

Once you save your pages, you can see what it will look like online by opening up your special folder again and clicking on the browser icon that contains your page's file name.

This html definition was meant to be a very basic introduction to html. If you would like more complete instruction, you can find free html tutorials and free html code at W3 Schools.

Return to Home from HTML Definition