Now that your audience is identified and your layout selected, the next step is to create a scaffolding around which your layout will hang. Like a fine portrait, a framework must be built to hold the design and keep the layout organized. This is where HTML comes in!

HTML stands for hyper-text markup language. It constitutes a set of what are known as "tags". These tags are markers that denote a certain function to perform on the text that they surround. They are denoted with a '<', the text marker, then the '>'.

For example, the majority of this website is held together with '<div>' tags that represent a container of text and/or other markup tags. Using these tags to hold your content becomes useful for formatting and design (which is applied via CSS discussed in the next section).

With HTML, the idea is to surround your content with the framing of components to be referenced later in the aesthetic design of your website. Using the HTML framework, you can specify the desired references for each piece of content and apply elements of design later once the basic framework is in place.

Take a look at the HTML that makes up this page! Push the Back button in your browser when you're done!