Page Layout
Written by Jen

This is not a tutorial on how to make a full page web layout, it's just teaching you how to start a page properly before you do anything.

Top tags
A page always starts with <html> because you're going to use HTML in it. A PHP page would not start with <html>, but that's another story. You then have the <head> tag following immediately after that. The <html> tag defines what you have at the very top of your browser window, like a site's name. It's also the place where you put your CSS stylesheet, your javascript (unless otherwise stated) and your Meta tags.

Meta Tags?

Meta tags are not required when you make your website, but it can be quite helpful for people to find your site on search engines. For starters, the Meta Description tag:

<meta name="description" content="A description of your site">

This will come up on search engines as the description underneath the link to your site. You can put something short like "A graphics site that offers Neopets and Anime graphics" or make it really long. But keep in mind, if you make it really long, not the entire thing will be shown on the search engine. Now to the Meta Keywords tag:

<meta name="keywords" content="Keywords, separated, by a, comma">

This Meta tag allows your site to come up when they search for the keywords on your Meta tag. This does not always work on search engines they usually scan the page content before scanning the Meta tag. Just to make it known to others who the person holding the copyright is, you can use the Meta Copyright tag:

<meta name="copyright" content="Your name, site name, site address">

This tag just basically encodes that you are the rightful owner of the site and that you hold copyright over the site's content (provided it's original and you didn't steal anything).

After all your Meta Tags, you will need to put the title of your site by using the following:

<title>Site Name</title>

This can be whatever you like, Unforunately, it can only be text (including symbols on your keyboard), and if it becomes too long, it will start to scroll. After your title tags, you can put in all the CSS and Javascript that you want, When everything you want to put in the head of your page is complete, close the head section with </head>. Once your head tag has been closed, you will need to start your body section with a <body> tag.

After the opening body tag, you can put anything you want. This can be your layout, javascript, PHP includes, whatever you feel like. When everything you want displayed on a page is finished, close the section with </body> and then immediately after that with </html>. This ends your entire page and you can put it away for others to view.