HTML: You Can Do It Yourself!

HTML: You Can Do It Yourself!

You're a beginner in the world of building websites. As such, you outsourced your cheap hosting website design to a professional. Your site has launched, and although you are very pleased with the work they've done, you have noted a few small things that should be modified or added.

It is such a pain to contact the designer or webmaster each and every time you decide to underline a word or change the font size, especially when it takes them time to get back to you. You're pretty sure it's quick and painless to make the change yourself, but haven't the slightest idea where to start! Here's a list of a few things you can definitely do on your own, giving you the power to make those small, last-minute changes to your cheap hosting website.

HTML Basics: The HTML Tag

The first thing you need to know: how HTML code itself is deciphered. It's pretty simple, really. If you view HTML code, you'll notice the < > characters an awful lot. Anything contained within is the HTML tag, the code that tells the website how to format your content for visitors. All text between those tags is affected.

If you rely on a CMS, you're probably wondering where in the world you even find the HTML. You'll see that it has two views: design view; and text/code/HTML view. Each CMS calls it something different. This latter view is the one you are looking for (design or layout view shows you what the page will actually look like to viewers.)

How Do I Make A Change?

Start by locating the text you want to modify, or the spot you want new text to go. When you find it, go ahead and make your changes.

If you are formatting text (underlining, italicizing, bolding, etc.), you need to search for the appropriate tag (a simple Google search can locate this information for you. Here are a couple:

• BOLD: enclose the word you want bolded in the HTML tag <strong>. Example: you want to make “I am writing HTML!” bold, so you type <strong>I am writing HTML!</strong>
• ITALIC: enclose the word you want italicized in the tag <em>. Example: <em>I am writing HTML!</em>.

How Do I Add A Picture?

You've modified the page for a new product. Your product is now offered in a new color, and you want to include a new image showcasing this color for users to see. To add the picture using HTML, begin by uploading the image to the website. When the file is uploaded, add an image tag like this, incorporating the new image filename:

<img src=”http://www.Example.com/newproductimage.jpg”&gt;

If you are linking an image to a webpage, though, things are a bit different. You'll rely on the HREF tag, which tells your website what link the image leads to:

<a href=”http://www.Example.com”><img src=”http://www.Example.com/newproductimage.jpg”></a&gt;

How Do I Add A Link?

Sometimes, you want a word or series of words within your text to link to another page or website. This is kind of like the process described above for linking an image, only instead of linking the image, you're linking text.

You want the word “couch” to link to the page displaying all couches you sell. So, you do the following:

<a href=”http://www.Example.com”>couch</a&gt;

If you want that page to open up in a new window or tab within the browser, you would add more. In this example, it's opening in a new window:

<a href=”http://Example.com&#8221; target=”_blank”>couch</a>

This takes care of basic changes. To perform other changes, simply Google HTML tags to find more! Was that as hard as you thought?

Photo Courtesy of Marjan Krebelj via Flickr Creative Commons