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Newbie
Webmaster Starter Kit
HTML
- the Code for Success
The
ability to write good clean html is one of the foundations for success
in this industry. Many people come into the industry with no understanding
of html and pin their hopes on a WYSIWYG HTML editor like Frontpage. HTML
editors certainly do have their place and this Starter Pack is being written
using one of the better commercial editors but no one should try and work
in this industry without the ability to write clean code by hand.
You
may wonder why you need to be able to hand code when there are editors
available. The answer is simple, if you want to guarantee that you will
get paid for your sales then you need to be able to code by hand. Every
editor is different but one thing that many of them have in common is
the inability to accept the sponsors referral strings as they appear.
Both Frontpage and Dreamweaver will totally alter the referral strings
to the point where the sponsor's software cannot identify who referred
the sign-up that came from your site. Once that happens the sponsor will
not know who to pay you so even if you insist on using an editor you will
still need to know enough HTML to check your referring codes.
HTML
is not rocket science so you can do what many have done before you and
that is, teach yourself. There are numerous books available in all good
book stores that will teach you how to write HTML. The Dummies series
are an excellent resource and the two producers of this pack taught themselves
how to code years ago from a Dummies book. There are also many fine tutorials
on line that will teach you how to write code and you can find links to
some of these in the resource section. Even when you are fluent in writing
code these books and tutorials will be invaluable because you just can't
remember every tag and every bit of code. We keep a copy of Sams Web Publishing
with HTML 4 handy because it has an excellent quick reference guide.
When
it actually comes time to start writing HTML you will find that Notepad
is perfectly suited to the job. WordPad should be avoided because it does
strange things to your code too but Notepad works fine. There are quite
a few very experienced webmasters out there who still use Notepad as their
main tool for writing HTML.
If
you simply cannot bring yourself to use something as basic as Notepad
then there are several freebies available that will almost give you the
best of both worlds. They will assist you in learning HTML and they will
assemble your pages quickly. Perhaps the best of the lot is Arachnophilia,
you can download a copy from arachnoid.com.
Notetab Lite is also quite good but not as user friendly as Arachnophilia.
You can get a copy of Notetable Lite here.
Need to Learn HTML from Scratch? Click Here for a FREE Online Tutorial courtesy of w3schools.com |
