HTML tips

Under constant construction, as html is such a versatile and huge programming language.

The Absolute Basics

All neocities websites, and most* websites run on HTML, XHTML, or HTML5. When creating a website, HTML is often the first choice to use! It's an old, tried-and-true, forgiving, and easily understood language.

HTML tags are easy to understand! Tags start with an < and end with a >. Tags themselves will have an opening and closing tag. The difference between them is that the closing tag will have a / before the tag name.

All websites start with 3 tags. <html><head><body>. The HTML tag tells the server the site is hosted on, your browser, and your computer that the website is coded in HTML. The Head tag controls metadata, and is read by search engines, so your site can appear on google. The Body tag controls what is shown on your site.

These three tags are the backbone of most websites.

The next most important tag is <style>, this tag controls CSS and style elements. We won't cover CSS just yet, but the Style tag is what makes websites look pretty!

Content HTML

When writing content for a website, such as articles, paragraphs, or more - you need to tell the computer what to do! And these are content tags. The most basic content tags are Header tags <h1><h2><h3><h4>, the paragraph tag,<p>, the break tag <br>, and the thematic break/horizontal rule, <hr>.

Header tags help separate text and act as titles. H1 is the largest, h2 is smaller, and it goes down to h6! h6 is the smallest of the header tags and not usually useful, mostly because it's usually smaller than your base text size.

See?

Titles!

More titles!

Smaller titles!

Even smaller!
The smallest!

Paragraph tags make up most content! They break up your text into nice paragraphs! the P tag doesn't need a closing tag, either.

The break tag, br, signifies a one line break. This is most often used when making navigation sections and organizing links, images, or adding extra space between paragraphs.



See the large gap? that's from four br tags! the BR tag also doesn't need a closing tag!

The horizontal rule tag also doesn't need a closing tag, and just adds a nice little line onto the page! It's great for separating topics!

See the line, and how with this site's layout it sort of makes a box, perfectly cutting the content in half? That's the power of the hr tag!