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Page Structure & Description Tags

Added: Nov 16, 2004 Level: Beginner Software: Dreamweaver FrontPage GoLive  
Author: Jeff Singer More by this author

Page Structure & Description TagsThe <HTML> Tag

The very first line of your HTML document should be:

<HTML>
The last line of your document should be:
</HTML>
It is very important that you do not place one of these tags anyplace else in your documents as they tell the browswer where your page begins and ends.

The <BODY> Tag

The BODY tag follows the </HEAD> tag. It is used to set basic page characteristics.

<BODY>
You can optionally set the following parameters from within this tag:
    Page Background & Text Color
  • BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" to make the background color white
  • BACKGROUND="/picture.jpg" use the named image for the background
  • TEXT="#000000" text will be black
    Link Colors
  • LINK="#660000" make links dark red
  • ALINK="#006600" make active links dark green
  • VLINK="#000066" make previously visited links dark blue
    Page Margins(MSIE Only)
  • TOPMARGIN="0" set the spacing at the top of the page to zero
  • LEFTMARGIN="15%" set the spacing at the left side of the page to 15% of the page width
  • RIGHTMARGIN="10" set the spacing at the right side of the page to 10 pixels
  • BOTTOMMARGIN="10" set the spacing at the bottom of the page to 10 pixels
The second to last line of your document, right above the </HTML> tag should be:
</BODY>
It is very important that you do not place one of these tags anyplace else in your documents as they tell the browswer where your page begins and ends.

The <HEAD> Tag

The second line (but before the BODY tag) of your HTML document should be:

<HEAD>
The information contained in the HEAD section of your document provides information to browsers and search engines, but is not displayed to the person viewing the page.

The end of the HEAD section is indicated by:

</HEAD>
An example of a HEAD section would be:

<HEAD>
<TITLE>This is a page about the HEAD tag</TITLE>
</HEAD>

The <TITLE> Tag

Between your <HEAD> & </HEAD> goes the TITLE tag.

<TITLE>
   This is the title of my page.
</TITLE>

The text between the open and close TITLE tags will appear on the top of the browser's window, as well as on many search engine's links to your site. Keep the TITLE short and meaningful.

The <META> Tag

Between your <HEAD> & </HEAD> goes the META tag(s). These are used to present information to search engines and spiders, not to your readers.

<META name="description" content="this is a page about nothing.">
<META name="keywords" content="page, nothing, programming">

These are two of the more common META tags for assisting search engines in indexing your site.

Author's URL: Jeff Singer
Learn HTML step-by-step from A to Z or improve your professional skills. More Tutorials: Featured Materials | Fresh Materials | More HTML Tutorials at Markuptutorials.com


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