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HTML, by itself, is actually a very easy language to learn. When you combine it with CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and other web languages, then it becomes a little too much for non-web designers to absorb.

HTML is nothing more than instructions for the browser in the form of tags. Tags (not to be confused with WordPress Tags) are letter codes surrounded by brackets like this: . Your text and images need to be surrounded by these tags so the browser knows where to place the content and how to display it. Otherwise, the browser will do what it wants to. And it won’t be pretty.

Most tags come in pairs – an opening tag: and a closing tag: . You’ll notice the only difference is the “/” in the closing tag. This tells the browser that it has reached the end of this particular instruction. The browser will then continue to look for the next instruction.

Here is a list of the most common HTML tags you will encounter using WordPress:

The Paragraph tag goes at the beginning and end of a paragraph of text.

The Anchor tag is used to create text and image links. The “href” attribute is where the URL goes.

Both the Strong tag and Bold tag designate what text to bold. WordPress uses when you click the Bold button, but if you use the  tag when typing in HTML mode WordPress will treat it the same.

Both the Emphasis tag and Italics tag designate what text to italicize. WordPress useswhen you click the Italicize button, but if you use thetag when typing in HTML mode WordPress will treat it the same.

Unordered Lists are lists that use bullets before each statement.

Ordered Lists are lists that use numbers or letters before each statement.

Both unordered and ordered lists use the List Item tag for each statement in their list.

The Header tags are used for page titles, headings, sub-headings, etc. There are 6 levels of Headers in HTML but there’s usually no reason to go beyond level 3. is the largest and treated as the most important and influential (by SEO standards). Each level after is less influential and appears in a smaller font size. Web pages shouldn’t have more than one tag. My themes use thetag for the page/post titles (that just makes sense to me). The default WordPress themes assign to the page/post titles. So if you’re using a theme that I designed, I advise you not to usetags in your text since there already is one on the page. Usefor your sub-headings andfor any smaller headings.

Tables help you separate content into columns and rows just like a spreadsheet or grid. They start and end with a Table tag. They also may contain the TBody Tags which contains the columns and rows of the table. Cellpadding is the space inside each table cell between the content and the border of the cell. Cellspacing is the space in between each cell. Border determines if there is a border around your cells and how thick it is.

TR stands for Table Row. Every table must have at least one row to start.

TD stands for Table Data Cell. This is the lowest level of the table tree and where your content goes. Every table has at least one table cell.

To create a simple table with two rows and two columns, your code would look something like this:

The Span tag is used for adding a Style (font size, color, etc.) to a specific piece of text or image. The content to be styled goes between the Span tags. The styles you want to assign go in the style quotes. This will require CSS knowledge.

The Image tag is an example of a tag that doesn’t have a closing tag. It closes itself by having its own “/” at the end of the code. The SRC attribute tells the browser the location source. In the example below the “logo.jpg” is located in the “images” folder. The ALT attribute tells the visitor what is supposed to be there if no image is visible. This is important for screen readers that can’t show images. This also helps search engines to determine what the image is depicting.

The Break tag is another “open tag only” bit of code. This is used to start a new line of text without starting a new paragraph.

Comment tags are used for adding notes for the web designer or content author to see in HTML mode. Anything within the Comment Tags will not be visible on the live web page by your visitors.

Search Engine Optimization

In order for your website to be found by Google users, proper SEO measures have to be implemented into your website. I’m going to cover the basics of the essential techniques to be used on any website.

Don’t expect to become an SEO expert after reading this. As a matter of fact, I’ll understand if you think this is too much information and you’d rather let someone else worry about it. But if you’re one of those people that likes to do everything themselves or just wants to be able to understand this stuff a little bit better… read on.

Link Popularity

Link popularity is the long (and never ending) process of getting your website’s link on as many quality websites as possible. Why? Firstly, they don’t call it the “Web” to make it sound scary. Websites linking to one another is what makes the Internet into an online web. Without other websites linking to yours, how’s the spider ever going to find you? And that’s exactly what Google and the other search engines send out – spiders (sometimes called “bots” for robots). Google sends out its army of web crawling spider programs to search out the web to see what’s out there and brings that information back to Google. The more links you have out there – the more times Google will find you.

Now it’s true that more links are better than fewer links, but more relative links is much better. For instance, putting your rock band website’s link on twenty random websites that have nothing to do with music will get Google to “crawl” your website. Unfortunately those links won’t convince Google that your website has a strong enough relevancy for the search results of “rock band”. If you put your band’s link on twenty music related websites, Google will definitely raise what’s known as your “ranking” in the search results.

A good place to start looking for websites to link from would be any companies that you partner with, affiliate yourself with, or just do business with. Politely ask them if they wouldn’t mind exchanging links with your website. I say exchange because they’ll most likely want you to post their link on your website – it’s only fair. If they know anything about search optimization, they should be glad to do it.

Other places to try:

• online business directories (ex: business.com, citysearch.com)
• local business directories (ex: local.yahoo.com, maps.google.com)
• organizations or groups your company belongs to (ex: chamber of commerce)
• directories that pertain to your field of interest (ex: lawyers could list on a lawyer directory)

Additionally, you can leave your link behind on blogs and forums that you visit that are related to your business. Don’t try selling yourself or spamming by leaving dozens of posts on one site. Actually participate in the blog and provide relevant, helpful feedback on the topics being discussed. Most will let you include your link or email. It’s a great way to leave a calling card and start a reputation of being helpful and informative.

There is also the social website scene. Websites like Twitter and LinkedIn are great for networking and getting your name out there. They can require a lot of time, but they are free services.

If you have the ability or resources to put out press releases, that would be another beneficial way to get your name out there. There are also websites for posting press releases online – so don’t limit yourself to just newspapers.

Always include your website
in everything you produce.
That includes press releases, business cards, print ads,
radio spots, direct mail, emails, etc.

If you’re having trouble finding places to link with, then check out your competition. In the Google search box type “links:companyname.com” (replace companyname.com with the actual domain of your competitor) and click Search. It will give you a list of all the web pages that Google has found that contain your competitor’s link. Many may be internal links within their own website but the rest will be from other websites. Go to these websites and see if you can exchange links as well. If anything, it should at least give you more ideas on how to find more websites to link with.

Keywords

Keywords and Key Phrases are what people type into search engines. Your goal as a website owner is to get the search engines to find your website if your content matches these key phrases.

First you have to decide what those key phrases are. Then you have to incorporate them into your content and into your code without going overboard. And stay away from generic terms.

Take me for example. If I focused just on the key phrase “website designer”, Google would just throw me into a pile of thousands of web pages it will find talking about website designers. If I focused on “WordPress website designer”, that would shorten the pile I’d be tossed into. But if I really wanted to rank high on searches, I could get even more specific with “WordPress website designer from
Massachusetts”. Now that will probably limit me to mostly local searches, but it will definitely get me ranked higher for such a specific search.

Keep in mind that Google crawls your whole website (hopefully) but treats each page of your website as a separate entry in its vast database. This is why you’ll be taken directly to the page for “Grandma’s Secret Strawberry-Blueberry Muffin Mix” on the 1,000,000 Favorite Recipes website if you searched for “strawberry blueberry muffin mix”. Google associated your search with that specific page and directed you to it as opposed to their home page. After all, you wouldn’t want to be brought to the website’s home page just to have to perform the search a second time, right?

Because search engines work like this, you have to treat each page as if it were an individual website. If you have a page that talks about computer keyboards, make sure it mentions “computer keyboards” at least three times in the text. Also make sure it’s in the Title and Description Meta tags. If you have images of the keyboards, include the phrase in the file names (computer-keyboard-01.jpg) and the Alternate tag (computer keyboard).

If you shorten the key phrase to just “keyboard”, then Google could confuse it with “electric keyboard” or “music keyboard” or “keyboard lessons”. So stay as consistent as possible. But don’t go overboard and repeat the phrase in every sentence. Your copy will seem unprofessional and unfriendly.

Title

The Title of your post or page is normally used for the Title Meta tag for that page. You’ll see it displayed at the top of your browser program. It is also used by Google in the search results as the clickable text. This shouldn’t be too long as you’ll notice Google won’t show the whole line of text if it doesn’t fit. A few of your most important keywords or phrases should be a part of the Title when ever possible.

Description

The Description Tag is also used by Google in the search results. Again it shouldn’t be too long as Google will only show so much. Without this Google usually grabs the first sentence in your page and maybe some text from further within your page. By entering your own description you improve the quality of what Google finds and what appears in Google.

Expanding on what I said earlier, you should treat each page as an individual just as Google does. Avoid using the exact same keywords, title, and description for each page. If it helps, think of each page as a person. You can use some of the same words to describe each but there should definitely be something unique about each one as well.

Ex: Babe Ruth, Brad Pitt, and Abraham Lincoln could each be found under “famous American male”. But only one would come up under “American president”, “pennies”, and “tall hats”.

General

Most of these settings should be self explanatory. This is where you name your blog, tell WordPress the URL of your main blog page, the Admin email address, set date and time formats to be used throughout the website, and more.

Always click “Save Changes” if you’ve changed any of the settings.

Two settings that are important to mention…

Membership – select this if you want to allow anyone to become a registered user. Uncheck this if you don’t want users or you plan to create all users manually.

New User Default Role – this determines what role a new user automatically becomes when they register. This is usually set to subscriber. Remember that you can assign new roles to each user on the Users page.

Note: I don’t know why they have this as a choice, but I don’t see why you would ever want all your users set as Administrators. That sounds like trouble. DON’T do that.

Find out more here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Settings_General_SubPanel

Writing (settings for creating and editing posts/pages)

Size of the Post Box – sets the default size of the text box in the Edit mode. Although it can be re-sized by dragging the diagonal lines in the bottom right of the box, you can change this setting so that it always starts at a comfortable size.

Default Post Category – from the drop-down menu choose the category you do the most writing in. This way all those posts will automatically be set to go in that category.

Remote Publishing – these settings allow you to use desktop software to add posts to your website.

Post via Email – these settings allow you to post to your website through your email program.

Find out more here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Settings_Writing_SubPanel

Reading (settings for the live content)

Front Page Display – if your website is just a blog site, this setting will usually be set at “your latest posts” so your visitors see exactly that. The other option is to assign a static Page as your home page.

Blog Pages Show at Most – this sets how many posts to show at a time. If it is set at 10, you will see no more than ten posts at a time on any page.

Syndication Feeds Show the Most Recent – this sets how many RSS feeds (post titles) to be shown in a visitors’ RSS Feed Readers.

Find out more here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Settings_Reading_SubPanel

Discussion

Default Article Settings – the third box in this list controls whether or not you want to let visitors leave comments on your website. But you can override it per post/page if you wish.

Other Comment Settings – here you can control whether visitors are required to fill out their name and email, whether they need to be registered users, and whether to list all the comments for a post on one page or break it up (useful if you get over 20 comments per post).

Other settings here are about getting email notifications when someone leaves a comment and whether it needs an Administrator’s approval before being posted to the website.

Find out more here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Settings_Discussion_SubPanel

Media Settings

Here you can set the size (by pixels) of the thumbnails that WordPress creates when you upload images. You can also set a maximum width for larger images so you don’t upload images that are too big to fit in your website’s design.

Find out more here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Settings_Media_SubPanel

Privacy

This setting is only necessary if you wish to block search engines from “crawling” your website. This would be appropriate if your website has a more private function or isn’t finished being built.

Find out more here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Settings_Privacy_SubPanel

Permalinks

Permalinks are what make your web page URLs legible by search engines as well as visitors. By default your pages’ URLs looks something like this: http://www.yourdomain.com/?p=123

I use the “Month and Name” choice and so my URLs look like this: http://www.tenten71.com/blog/2009/09/know-your-web-browser/

As you can see the blog on my website is installed in a folder called “blog” and this particular post was posted in September of 2009 and has the permalink title of “know-your-web-browser” (which was created from the Permalink & Title options when I created the post).

Find out more here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Settings_Permalinks_SubPanel

Miscellaneous

Find out more here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Settings_Miscellaneous_SubPanel

The first page under the Tools button is Tools. This provides links to two browser applications (Turbo & Press This). They do not have any affect on your website directly and therefore your users will not be affected by them.

Note: I’ve never used either program so I really don’t know how good they are.

Find out more here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Tools_Tools_SubPanel

Import

If you’re re-installing your WordPress website from a WordPress backup file or moving your website from another blog-type web platform, you will be able to import your exported file here.

Find out more here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Tools_Import_SubPanel

Export

This is where you would perform one part of a WordPress backup. This export function will only backup your posts, pages, comments, custom fields, categories, and tags. It will NOT backup media files or the core WordPress files or theme files. For this, you will need to use an FTP program to download all of those files.

Find out more here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Tools_Export_SubPanel

Upgrade

This is where you can perform an upgrade to the latest version of WordPress when WordPress has an upgrade available. You may also re-install WordPress over itself if you have any corrupt files.

If you see any additional links under the Tools section, they may be for configuring or using certain plug-ins that have been installed on your website. Go to the corresponding plug-ins page for details concerning that particular plug-in/tool.

Find out more here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Tools_Upgrade_SubPanel

The Users button takes you to the section for managing your Users. The main area called Authors & Users gives a list of all your users with their usernames, actual names, email addresses, their assigned role, and how many posts they’ve created. If your website doesn’t accept users, then your name will be the only one listed.

You can edit each user’s info, assign them a role, or delete a user.

The first user created is always the Admin (administrator). This is a role that grants the user permission to make any and all changes to the website.

Other roles for users are:

Editor – Someone who can publish posts, manage posts as well as manage other people’s posts, etc.

Author – Someone who can publish and manage their own posts

Contributor – Someone who can write and manage their own posts but NOT publish posts

Subscriber – Someone who can read comments, leave comments, receive newsletters, etc.

By default new users are automatically assigned as Subscribers unless you change the setting (Settings – General).

The purpose for having these different roles is in case there’s more than one person making changes to your website or you want to give users or just certain users the ability to add content to your website.

Find out more here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Users_Authors_and_Users_SubPanel

Add New User

You can manually add new users using this button. Input their name, give them a username and password, assign a role to them, and enter their email address. You can even check off whether or not you want them to receive an email with the password automatically.

Note: Passwords should not be easy to guess. The password should be at least 8 characters long. Use upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols like ! ” ? $ % ^ & ).

Find out more here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Users_Add_New_SubPanel

Your Profile

This is a shortcut to your (the person logged in) user settings. Here you can change your own password if you need to.

Find out more here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Users_Your_Profile_SubPanel