Newbies to HTML

[czi02]

Hi there;;;;

I am a beginner in html. I dont know where to start? Does html is the most important thing to study?

Where am I going to start, and the first thing to do in doing a website?

How to make a website? and what is the easiest thing to make and udnerstand html?

and how can you publish your site in the internet? Does it really needed some host to had an url? what is host? does it have a free hosting?

[drhowarddrfine]

Some of the best tutorials are at W3Schools

[Death Slaught]

Before going into domains and hosting, you should learn HTML, and CSS first. As drhowarddrfine pointed out w3schools has some of the best tutorials available, but I find w3schools to be a better reference than a place to learn. My opinion is to buy an up to date book or two, sit down, and read it/them.

^_^ Thanks, Death

[Delerna]

You can write html files with a text editor such as notepad.
You can save those html files locally on your computer.
You can run those html files from your computer.


All of the above is sufficient to learn to write
html,css,jscript,vbscript,DOM etc etc.

Finally I third the W3Schools site as a great place to start your journey
Have fun

[hoaw]

I know that your question has already been answered a few times, but here's my 2 cents for everything.

HTML (HyperTextMarkupLanguage) is exactly where you want to start. It is the basic building block to essentially every webpage. It's definately not the hardest language to learn; infact, it could be considered one of the easier languages out there.

I don't know your full intention of what you want to do with your website, but if you're going for a personal webpage to show your friends and family, you may want to use a generator (a program used to write code for you as you design a page/site) and get the job done much quicker. You could use Microsoft FrontPage if you have Windows office, or go to Yahoo! Geocities. With some exceptions you can get a free domain, host, and generator all in one. Also, many other websites out there can set you up with a free account (including free hosting, subdomains, etc).

But you would really like to sit down and learn the language, great! www.w3schools.org is a wonderful reference website, and I'm pleased to see how many people know of it. However, Death Slaught made a great statement, althought it may have great tutorials, it's still more of a reference website.

Take a look at their HTML tutorial and get a feel of what you'll be learning.
But, a book is definately an excellent way to get started. My suggestion would be the Sam's Teach Yourself in 24 Hours series. You may want to look for either Sam's Teach Yourself in 24 Hours HTML4.01 or Sam's Teach Yourself in 24 Hours HTML and CSS.

Unlike the tutorials, they'll explain in depth what everything is, what they are used for, etc.

The best thing to keep in mind is, don't limit yourselft to one or the other, try both! It can only help.

To answer the rest of your questions of how to publish your website in short is...

All of the codes that you will write (in this case HTML) are saved into a document. As stated before, you can use a program like notepad. (An HTML document must have a file extention of .html or .htm [i.e. myfile.html] - much like how you save a image as .jpg, .gif, or .png)
When you are ready to publish your webpage you upload the file to your host. (The host is connected to a server, which is what connects your website to the internet. Some places that will host for you are www.yahoo.com, www.branzone.com, www.startlogic.com, www.athost.net.) When you sign up, you'll be asked what you want to title your website; this will usually become your domain name. (An example of a domain name is mydomain.org). Once connected to the internet you'll get a full URL (Uniform Resource Locator) which will look like http://www.mywebsite.org.

Although you need a host to go online, you don't need one to view your work on your own computer. When you save the file onto your computer, you can view it in your favorite browser.

I hope that I could help in one way or another. Good luck, have fun!

[drhowarddrfine]

The only warning I can give about using books is make sure they are last edited within the last year. Far too many still use obsolete techniques. In fact, I picked up one from the library to look at because the author is an acquaintance of mine. It was published in 2006. A few days ago, on his website, he announced he has dropped some of the techniques in that book because they are out of favor.

That is why I recommend online tutorials from a reputable source rather than books.