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The Basic HTML Document's Shell
You have the content, now you are ready to present it! Here's the basic markup for creating the skeleton of the HTML document.
When you structure your document, by using the basic HTML framework, you will create three to four basic areas within it.
The four areas are as follows:
- Specifying the versioning of HTML used.
- Informing browsers to start interpreting any HTML markup.
- Further information about the document but not part of the document's main viewed content.
- And lastly, the heart and soul of the page, main area of content.
The specifying of what version of HTML is used within the document is through using <!DOCTYPE="Declaration of appropriate versioning information here">. This is placed at the very top of your document.
The versioning will generally be one of the two more recent popular versions of HTML [3.2 or 4.01]. With the introduction of HTML 4.0, the specifying is recommended to be done based on How the HTML is presented through your Web page [frames, cascading style sheets, or whatever]. Many people leave this markup off their documents, some may not even know it exists.
Now for creating the rest of the basic framework or skeleton of your HTML document!
<html>
<head>
<title>What The Page Is About</title>
</head>
<body>
The Document's Main Content Goes Here!
</body>
</html>
That's all there is to it. With those basic elements, you have framework your document.
The head area is where you will be placing most of filler information for search engines to use. The title is essentially the only part that will appear to the readers of your Site on the top bar of their browser. This is also the area that holds any of the various META elements you decide to use for holding key information about that page. There are other components you can slip into the head area of the page, used for Cascading Style Sheet [CSS], JAVA, or JavaScript [JS]. To make a bad pun, even though this is more of a behind the scenes section, this can be a very heady area of information!
Since this is information used essentially by the browser and search engines, only certain elements are recognized and translated properly. You will not be able to use text markup for adding emphasis or special characteristics and/or attributes to this area's text. The browser just will not translate them nor attempt to.
The body area is where you will place all the text - your content. This is also where you will be doing the markup for that text, and any object linking information for your page.
When you are done, close the content with </body> Then inform the browser you are done with </html>
When you view Web pages next time while surfing the Web, click on View Source of the page [found on your browser's tool bar]. You will notice that, even if the document isn't specified what version of HTML it is using, the main document structure elements are generally easily found.