Though you don't need to know any HTML to have a good 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. Some HTML, links and images for example, is simply inserted in the appropriate area among the text, but HTML for formatting needs to surround the selected text. For example, to make a word bold, surround the bold word with <b> and </b>.
HTML can be integrated into your ShopSite store by entering tags into your store's text, like the footer text in the example below:
On the page, this will look like:
Contact Paula's Pies
for more information.
All pies are shipped in special containers to assure they arrive
at your door intact.
Home | Fruit Pies | About Paula's
Formatting:
Place these tags before and after the text to be formatted.
<b>, </b> Bold
<i>, </i> Italic
<tt>, </tt> Typewriter type (changes the font)
<center>, </center> Centers the text on the page
<h1>,</h1> Largest size heading
<h3>,</h3> Medium size heading
<h5>,</h5> Smallest size heading
<p> Paragraph break (skips a line between sentences)
<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">highlighted text</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 bold-face 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 from Hotwired 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 online. 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 granddaddy 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 up to date as well.
Composing Good HTML is a very thorough guide to all the in and outs of creating documents for the World Wide Web. It is not a beginner's guide, but a more in-depth analysis.
Composing Evil HTML is a tongue in cheek guide to writing HTML documents that will look absolutely terrible on certain browsers. Read it as a guide to what not to do.
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