Working with ShopSite

Using HTML in ShopSite

Though you don't need to know any HTML to setup a good-looking ShopSite store, knowing a little will help you tremendously. This is a quick guide to a few key tidbits of HTML that all ShopSite stores really ought to incorporate.

You can use HTML in your ShopSite store by simply entering tags into your store's text fields, like the store description, or the page footer text in the example below:

On the page, this will look like:

Formatting

Some HTML tags, such as those for links and images, are simply inserted in the appropriate place in the text, but HTML for formatting needs to surround the selected text. For example, to make a word bold, surround the word with <b> and </b>.

Place these tags before and after the text to be formatted.

<b>bold words</b>               Bold 

<i>italic words</i>             Italic

<tt>typewriter words</tt>       Typewriter type (changes the font)

<center>centered text</center>  Centers the text on the page

<h1>large words</h1>            Largest size heading

<h3>medium words</h3>           Medium size heading

<h5>small words</h5>            Smallest size heading



<p>                         Paragraph break (skips a line between paragraphs)

<br>                        Line break (starts new line)



<a href="a.URL.that.you.want.to.link.to">the highlighted text</a>

<img src="location/of/the/image">

<a href="mailto:an.e-mail.address">recipient's name</a>

The Language of the Web

Though you don't need to build HTML documents from scratch using ShopSite, you might want to experiment with adding HTML tags to your store. Simple design elements such as boldface type, italics, indented lists, large and small-sized text, and hotlinks can improve the look and usefulness of your text. Below are several guides for writing HTML. Again, there will be lots of information that the basic ShopSite user won't need. Just sift through that to find the pearls of wisdom that you'll use.

• If you really want to learn HTML, the Webmonkey Teaching Tool is a must-read. It's an easy to use reference tool, that, unlike some of the sites below, is not designed to be printed out and pored over. It's for browsing on line. Look at this one first, and if you're really interested in becoming a Web designer, read it all the way through.
• The Beginner's Guide to HTML is the grand-daddy of HTML guides. Some of the best Web designers out there got started with earlier versions of this resource.
• The Bare Bones Guide to HTML is a very complete and relatively friendly guide to HTML tags that is available in many languages, and is not only well designed, but also up to date.

ShopSite Help and Resource Center February 13, 2004 Give Feedback

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