The audience of an article like this can be somewhat diverse.  Maybe you are a student who is setting out to learn HTML as part of your classwork, or maybe you are a businessman who wants to take a do-it-yourself approach to getting your business some Internet exposure.  You may choose to use a WYSIWYG tool like Frontpage to design your site, or maybe you employ a professional to initially create your site, while you adjust the HTML for future changes.  Or just leave it all to a professional web designer.

When developing a website yourself, it is important to know the basics of html programming.  A WYSIWYG tool is great, but sometimes, you just need to tweak the html code.  HTML is textual and you can create a simple web page with nothing more than a simple text editor like NotePad. 

HTML is primarily consisted of what we call "tags".  Tags are specific words or codes enclosed in < and > characters.  Some tags represent things such as formatting, links, images, and tables.   An extremely simple HTML page opens with an HTML tag, contains opening and closing body tags, some content between the body tags, and closes with an HTML tag.

The HTML tags, themselves, are not visible to the viewing person.  Tags are placed around the actual content, and are also matched with a closing tag.  Note:  There are some tags that don't have a matching closing tag.  You can alter background colors, fonts, use tables, links, and more.