Creating Your First HTML Document/Webpage

Note: I am a Windows user, so I will educate you on how I code as a PC user.

By: Leon “2K” Asare

To start your first html web document go to the programs section on your computer.

Or if you can’t find it, type in the name Notepad in the programs section.

The simplest and easiest way to get started is to go to your All Programs section and select Notepad.

Note: there are also free text editors that are much better and easier to use than Notepad. My favorite is Visual Studio Code, but there are many more.

Why HTML?

The building blocks of websites and apps and web development is HTML, which stands for Hypertext Markup Language. With this language alone, you can code your website and upload it to the internet. Obviously, your website won’t look very pretty with out CSS (Cascading Stylesheets) and won’t be that functional without Javascript, but with HTML alone, you can add text, images, links, create lists, etc.

Note: how to add links from W3schools.com

Adding pictures with HTML, courtesy of W3schools.com

Getting Started Coding

Note: Most Html elements, also called tags have an open < and > closing bracket.

These are meta tags, these will not be seen by a visitor to your website. They will be explained more later. Picture courtesy of W3schools.com

The tags within the <body> tags </body> will be seen by the visitor, unless they are comments <!–comment–>. comments are used to remind you of something you placed in your code.

How HTML tags are used

The meta tags within the head will not be seen by your visitors to your website. Meta tags or metadata are what tell a browser how to perceive or view your website. Here are some examples:

Every HTML document starts with the <DOCTYPE html> tag, it tells the browser this is an HTML document.

The <html lang=”en-us”> tag, tells the browser what language you are using in your document.

The <meta charset=”utf-8″> tells the browser what characters or alphabet you are using in your document.

The <meta name =”viewport” content=”width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0″> tag tells the browser to scale your website based on the size/scale of the screen.

The <meta name=”description” content=”This is an example”> tag tells your browser what the webpage/website is about.

The <meta name=”keywords” content=”your, keywords, go, here”> are where you put keys words that help your website place higher with search engines.

The <meta name=”author” content=”your name”> This tells the browser who wrote the Website.

The <title>Example</title> is were you place the name of your webpage.

The opening <body> and closing </body> tags are where you put your content that you want to be viewed by the website visitor.

The headings tags, which start at <h1> heading</h1> and ends with <h6> Heading </h6>. Heading one is the largest and most important, Heading six is the smallest and least important Heading.

The <p> tag is where you put your paragraph it ends with the </p>. Everything in between will be seen by the website visitor.

The <a href=”leontheprogressivecoder.com”>The Progressive Coder Website link</a>. The (a) anchor and href tells your browser where to go. The so-called “href” or “anchor” tag, ends with </a>. Note : the text in between the opening <a href> and closing tag </a> is where your visitors will click on to go to the site or page you want your visitors to go.

How to Save Your First HTML Document

Go to file menu and select save as. For your first page it will be index.html. Each additional page will saved according to their title and function, for example: about.html will be your about page.