Whichever host you decided to use during Part 2 of Doll Blogging: Names & Hosts, you should learn some basics in HTML!

HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language and it is what is used online for writing coding. While I won’t be going everything there is to know about coding, I feel that most bloggers should know the basics for it. Even if you feel as if you can rely on text editors all the time, it’s still a good idea to know the basics and to understand how to write your own basic coding for your blog entries. I’m splitting up this article into a few different sections: text, images and links.

Text

To make your text bold:

<strong>text to make bold here</strong>

To make your text italicized:

<em>text to make italicized here</em>

To make your text crossed out:

<span style=”text-decoration: line-through;”>text to make crossed out here</span>

To make your text underlined:

<span style=”text-decoration: underline;”>text to make underlined here</span>

To make your text smaller:

<small>text to make small here</small>

Images

Let’s take this image for example (http://blythelife.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/html-sampleimage.jpg):

In order for any image to show up on your blog, you need this code:

<img src=”URL” />

To make the image above show up, the coding looked like this:

<img src=”http://blythelife.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/html-sampleimage.jpg” />

Links

Linking text to a website address:

<a href=”URL”>text to show up here</a>

If you wanted to link to BlytheLife.com’s URL (http://blythelife.com) the coding would look like this:

<a href=”http://blythelife.com”>BlytheLife.com</a>

Linking text to an email address:

<a href=”mailto:emailaddress”>text to show up here</a>

If you wanted to link to BlytheLife’s email address (blythelife@gmail.com), the coding would look like this:

<a href=”mailto:blythelife@gmail.com”>email BlytheLife.com</a>

Linking an image to a website address:

<a href=”URL”><img src=”IMAGE URL” /></a>

If you wanted to link to an image (eg. blythe.jpg) and link it to BlytheLife.com, the coding would look like this:

<a href=”http://blythelife.com”><img src=”blythe.jpg” /></a>

If you haven’t already, be sure to read part one (The Introduction) and part two (Names & Hosts). In two weeks, on March 21, 2011, Part 4 (Themes, Templates & Designs) will be posted.

• Part 1: The Introduction
• Part 2: Names & Hosts
• Part 3: HTML
• Part 4: Themes, Templates & Design (March 21, 2011)
• Part 5: Promoting Your Site (April 4, 2011)