HTML, which stands for HyperText Markup Language, is the language of the web. It is the technology almost all websites on the web. While different websites use different technologies, virtually all of them share one common theme – they use HTML to display their contents to your web browser. Even Flash based websites use HTML to embed the flash into the web page.
Do I Need to Know HTML?
You don’t necessarily need to know HTML in order to create your own website. This is because you can always use a website builder or an HTML editor to create your website.
But even if you do use one of those options, learning HTML will certainly increase your understanding of how your website works. Plus, many website builders and content management systems allow you to add your own HTML code.
How Do I Learn HTML?
There are plenty of resources to help you learn HTML, both offline and online. An online tutorial can give you a quick introduction to HTML, whereas a book may provide a more comprehensive coverage of the language.
The quickest way to get started with HTML is with the HTML tutorial at Quackit. This is a website I put together to help people learn web technologies for creating websites.
If you’re the type of person who likes to learn by experimentation, check out these HTML codes. You can copy and paste the codes into your own website, then change them to suit. You should also check out this list of HTML tags.
What Other Web Technologies Should I Learn?
Although HTML is the main markup language of the web, it’s not the only one. Far from it. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of web technologies out their powering websites all over the world. Further to this, more technologies are being added day by day.
But don’t let that scare you!
You don’t need to learn every web technology in order to create and maintain your website. As mentioned, if you use a website builder or CMS, you don’t even need to learn HTML if you don’t want to.
Check out Quackit for tutorials on how hosting works if you’d prefer to take control of this side of things yourself, which can be beneficial if you think you’ve found a hosting service more tailored towards what you need.
But if you do have an interest in learning more, there are a handful of key technologies you should learn first. These include HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Once you’re comfortable with those languages, you should introduce yourself to SQL, plus a server-side scripting language such as PHP or ColdFusion.