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How to Specify Pages in HTML

written by: Avionne Akanbi•edited by: Simon Hill•updated: 3/30/2010

If you have ever considered creating a website from scratch, you will need to know the basic language HTML. HTML, or Hyper Text Mark up Language is a language, that is used to create basic websites. When you specify your website in HTML, you need to define the unique characteristics of your site.

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    An Introduction To HTML Tags

    FLASH WEB PIC 1 One of the first ways to specify a page in HTML is to introduce yourself to tags. The tag is a command that defines exactly what you want to create, it can be the insertion of an image, putting text on a page, and specifying the entire web page itself. Every tag is defined with an opening and closing symbol. There are key words that specify the command that you are trying to execute. For instance if you would like HTML to create a table, or a box to hold your contents on the website, your tag would begin to look like this <table> </table>. The main thing to remember is that every tag must be opened and closed in order for HTML to understand your command. If you ever get an error message, in most cases it is because the tags weren't properly closed or opened.

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    Setting Up the Webpage

    When we are setting up our website we will want to start by specifying a page in HTML. This includes the characteristics of the page such as the size, the color, how many tables, and so forth. Let's look at an example of how we would specify a page in HTML, with the following tags.

    <HTML> This is the first tag on the page that let's the browser know which program we are using. Remember that this is the open tag to start off the programming for the page, and at the very end of the page you must close the tag with </HTML>

    <title>Temi's Computer Company</title> This tag is the title, it primarily let's your visitors know the main subject matter, of the website they are visiting. This is key when visitors are searching for a specific subject. In this example the title is "Temi's Computer Company".

    <table> This is the tag which introduces a table, or a place where the content for your website will go. Once you set up your table tags, then you will want to specify rows and columns, that fit the layout of the site that you are aiming for.

    <td> TD stands for table data. This tag sets up the actual table which holds your data, images and links.

    <tr> TR stands for table row. This tag is used to define any rows that you would like to set up within your table data.

    <image src> This is the tag that deals with any images that you plan to incorporate. A link to a directory is written into the code of this tag, so that HTML knows exactly where to find the image.

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    Specifying the colors of the page with CSS

    Now that you are familiar with tags and their functions we want to learn the functions that add some color to your web page. The basic way in HTML to add color is found in the bodybackground tag or <Bodybackground = red>. This is one way to accomplish adding color to your site, but you can also use CSS. CSS is a program that works along with HTML to add a vast array of colors from a preset palette. The great thing about using CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets to add color, is that you only have to write the code for the CSS color palette once. If you have multiple HTML pages, they will all reference one CSS sheet.

    Here is an example of CSS incorporated with HTML. In this case the color of this page is purple, so the file will request a specific purple color from the style sheet.




    <title>My first styled page</title>

    <style type="text/css">

    body {

    color: purple;

    background-color: #d8da3d }



    When you teach yourself the basic HTML programming language to set up your website, you will soon discover new techniques and tricks to make your page unique!