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Basic HTML Page Structure

All HTML web pages should begin with the <html> and end with its closer counterpart </html>. The HTML tag lets the browser know that it should expect tags inside the document to follow HTML rules.

The document then consists of two parts, the head (<head>...</head>) and the body (<body>...</body>). The head in the sample page below contains only the title (<title>...</title>) which is displayed by the browser in its title bar; this information is also used as the first line of an entry in a search engine such as Google or Yahoo!

The body contains code and text for what will appear in the browser's window. This example contains only four lines of code...and four corresponding lines of output.

  1. The paragraph start and end tags (<p>...</p>) surround the text "Hello, world!".
  2. The <HR> tag (`H'orizontal `R'ule), which is used used to generate the full-width line, has no corresponding closer.
  3. &copy; is known as an HTML entity, a character item not available from the keyboard. The <BR> tag (line `BR'eak) causes a new line to be started.
  4. The last line contains nothing special.
Source Code Rendering by Browser
<html>
  <head>
    <title>Hello, world! page</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <p>Hello, world!</p>
    <HR>
    &copy;2006 DFStermole<BR>
    Created: 12 March 2006
  </body>
</html>

© 2006 DFStermole
Created 11 Mar 2006
Last Modified 8 Aug 2006