Hello World!

Welcome to "my first website"

So what is a website? And how does it work?

A website (alt spelling: web site) is a collection of related web pages, images, videos or other digital resources that are addressed with a common domain name or IP address in an Internet Protocol-based network (a network that transmits data across a "packet-switched network," a network that bundles all transmitted data together at once). Thus this information being transferred is actually just a document, usually a document written in plain text...HTML or XHTML

So what are HTML and XHTML?? HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language and XHTML stands for Extensible Hypertext Markup Language. Now what does that mean? Well lets break it apart. Markup is very much what it sounds like. It is a way of assigning labels to text ("marking up" text if you will) to give it meaning. The Hypertext portion may sound somewhat familiar. Does it sound more familiar. when slightly change to Hyperlink? More commonly referred to as just "link"? Well that is what it is, Hypertext is text that hyperlinks to another web-resource. So put it all together you have Hypertext Mark up and it is a computer Language...Hypertext Markup Language, or HTML. In the case of XHTML, it is the same thing only it has stricter rules that make it conform to another programming language, XML, Thus the Extensible portion of XHTML.

But enough about that, lets dive in.

Here is something that you might not know about HTML. When writing code, browsers only recognize ONE space. Thus if I hit space 5 times like this you only see one space inserted.

The same goes for pressing return... Browsers recognize a return the same as they recognize a space. Thus no matter how many times you press return, it will NOT break the line and it will not add more then one space.

So how do you add a line break? Well you use the break tag "<br />".
Now that is some wired looking jumbily-mumbily. Well that is what an HTML "tag" looks like. Tags need to be opened AND closed. You open a tag with <tag> and close it with </tag>. There are a few exceptions (like the break tag), but we will get there later. In the mean while, lets take a look at a few more tags.

The paragraph tag (p)

A paragraph tag is used to include information that would go in a paragraph, much like writing a paper or essay...

This is an UNORDERED list: (ul)

And this is an ORDERED list: (ol)

  1. Gold
  2. Silver
  3. Bronze

Headers (h1)

This is how they work (h2)

Each one gets a little bit smaller (h3)

But as you can see, all header tags are in a bold weight font and has two line breaks after it (h4)

Also the headers importance is dictated by the number (h5)
This is as low as it gets... (h6)

Here are some font style tags:

Everything should be with in a tag that will describe what it is. So here we have a paragraph. With in the paragraph we may have an area that we want to appear STRONG which is very similar to being BOLD. Also if you want some text to have EMPHISIS it is similar to if you want it to be ITALIC. Also you can use UNDERLINE or STRIKE.

So now that we have general idea, where is this Hypertext portion?

Well there are still a few more tags that we have not gone over and one is the Anchor tag (<a>"). So here are a few hyperlinks: Google Gizmodo Facebook You will notice that there is a new part to this tag, not just the <a>, but there is also a "href" in there... Well that stands for Hypertext Reference, ie, where you want to link to. When you fill in that area, make sure that it goes with in double quotes ("") AND that you include the WHOLE URL, yes that includes the "HTTP://" and the "www.". Also be carefully here about the spacing inside and outside of the tag...

Now you have your very first website. The cyberspace awaits...