Hello and Welcome to the Quick Start Guide To Coding! Over the course of the next few pages, you will be reviewing a very brief but hopefully helpful course on simple HTML and CSS coding. Of course you must realize that after reviewing and mastering the covered steps: you will not have the same technical finesse as a Level 75 Internetz Mage. This does not mean that you cannot become one though. This tutorial will cover the basics of web development, covering topics like basic framework (as you will read below) then content management/organization. Finally you wil finish up with some style tips so you look interesting on your global debut. To begin, you will need a means to write code. I personally use Microsoft products and would recommend Notepad++ or Microsoft WebMatrix. Both are free but have a world of difference in features. Notepad++ is a basic program and is excellent for beginners while WebMatrix offers a higher end feel with pretty visual aids and lots of feature, but can feel a bit overwhelming when trying to find your way around. If you are not as confident go with Notepad++ otherwise try your hand with Microsoft.
Here are the links to where you can download the respective software:

Okay, first step: Define your document as

<!DOCTYPE html >

This will tell the computer that you intend to use HTML code.
Then continue with:

<html>
<head>
<title>simple document</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>a simple paragraph</p>
</body>
</html>

Now, you have a basic HTML document. You can add some cheap thrills later on; but before that, we have to understand what each element does and how it works in relation to each other.

Think of a web page as a box with smaller boxes inside. Kind of like how you would purchase a set of Tupperware for your Grandma. Each "tag" holds a separate element that functions differently to all the other tags.

For instance the <body> element denotes the largest of the boxes. It hold everything in the site and just like a box it has to have a lid. When you have put everything in the box that you want you close it up with the same element but with a forward slash /. In this case you would close it up with </body>. Every element must be closed otherwise your webpage will not perform as you would want it to.

So, going off what you just read and looking back to the first box on the left every element holds the next. Let us move on to the main purpose of a web page: displaying content.

In the example web document provided: you will find two places, the paragraph element(<p></p>) and the title element(<title> </title> ), that contain information for the web user. A professional website contains these two and many others but for the sake of simplicity we will focus on those two and a few others

Here is a quick description of each tag:

It provides a short description of what is contained in the page. The interesting thing about a tab is that it is used in printed media as well as new media like web development as a navigation aid
The paragraph element holds the bulk of your writing. Whatever important stuff you want to say put it here. A webpage is made up of a lot of paragraph elements.