Basic html

First, we need to put some stuff into our .html file, to tell the user's computer what to expect. We do this in the head of our html document. Try this:

<HTML>
  <HEAD>
     <TITLE>
     This is the page title! Personalize it!
     </TITLE>
     <LINK REL=StyleSheet HREF="myname.css" TYPE="text/css">
  </HEAD>

You'll notice a few things in the example above:

On the very first line, we told it that we're writing in HTML. This is important!
Almost every "tag" that we open (a tag is the stuff in brackets like <this>) gets closed by repeating the tag with a slash (like </this>). This tells the browser that we're done with that element. There are a few exceptions, but it's usually a good bet to close it if you're not sure.
The line which starts with "<LINK" tells the browser where to find your style sheet. You should change myname.css to be the name of your .css file!

If you try to load your page now, you'll see it's pretty boring -- in fact, it's totally BLANK except for the title right at the top of the window. Let's add some fun stuff!

  <BODY>
     <H1>
       This is the header of my page!
     </H1>
     <P>
	This is a paragraph about me.  My name is Rosemary, and I'm 
        26 years old. I like to program computers, teach, and make webpages 
        for my friends.  I also like to play with my two cats, Ra and 
        Nephthys.  I live in a house with pink and turquoise paint.
     </P>
     <P>
        This is another paragraph about me.  I have a little brother.  
        I lived in ten different places when I was a kid!  My mom and dad
        live in Boston, Massachusetts.  I miss them a lot.
     </P>

  </BODY>
</HTML>

Things to notice:

All the "meat" of your webpage goes in the "body" of the file, between <BODY> and </BODY>.
See how I closed my H1 (that stands for "header 1") and P (stands for paragraph) tags? I even closed the <HTML> tag that we opened before!
I can make separate paragraphs with the P's. It makes the page easy to read.

If you try to load this page, you'll get something like this:

This is the header of my page!

This is a paragraph about me. My name is Rosemary, and I'm 26 years old. I like to program computers, teach, and make webpages for my friends. I also like to play with my two cats, Ra and Nephthys. I live in a house with pink and turquoise paint.

This is another paragraph about me. I have a little brother. I lived in ten different places when I was a kid! My mom and dad live in Boston, Massachusetts. I miss them a lot.

Put in some stuff about yourself!

Let's see if we can spice it up using some color!