How to Use HTML
HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language. In it's simplest form, it tells a web browser (such as Internet Explorer) how to display text. This is accomplished using "tags," of which there are always two: an opening tag and a closing tag, written like this: <tag> </tag>
For instance, to make a sentence bold, you would begin the bold with <b> and end it with </b>. The section between the two "Bs" would be displayed as bold by a web browser. <i>Italics is similar.</i>
In addition, you can add links to other web sites using href, like this:
<a href="http://www.cnn.com">These words will link to CNN.com</a>
Also, the entire page needs to be enclosed in HTML tags, like this <html> and </html>.
Let's look at a very basic website:
<html>
<header>
<title>The Title of Your Website Goes here</title>
</header>
<body>
The main articles and <b>content</b> of your <i>front</i> page go here.
<a href="page2ofyourwebsite.html">This is a link to page 2 of your website</a>
</body>
</html>
If you were to type the above into a text file, using a program such as Notepad, and then save the file with the extension .html instead of .txt, you would then be able to open this file with your web browser, and it would look like this:
The main articles and content of your front page go here.
This is a link to page 2 of your website
This is, of course, the most basic introduction to HTML. A full and easy tutorial can be found at http://w3schools.com/html/default.asp
A helpful way of working with HTML is to use an HTML editor. This is a program that enables you to easily switch back and forth between HTML code and a visual representation of the way it will look in a browser, making editing and adding elements easier and more visual.
The most popular of this type of software are Microsoft Frontpage and Adobe Dreamweaver. These are powerful programs that can do a lot more than just edit HTML, but they are also expensive.
For a simple and free HTML editor, check out Kompozer.