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HTML & WYSIWYG Tutorial

By Jemma Fong · Comments (0)
Thursday, December 9th, 2010

HTML – Hyper Text Markup Language

WYSIWYG – What You See Is What You Get editor

For some of my clients who are using a content management application or WordPress, there are times when you will need to use HTML rather than the visual mode of a WYSIWYG.

Some common challenges that need to be considered are the following:

1. Copying and pasting document content from Word or PowerPoint or Adobe PDF, Excel

a.       Challenge: spacing or font formatting that seems to have been brought over from source document.

b.      Solution: always copy and paste source material into NOTEPAD and then re-copy and paste into your WYSIWYG editor.

2.       When either copying source material in, or writing directly into the editor

a.       Challenge: Sometimes extra line spacing occurs when you don’t want it to.

b.      Solution: You may need to look at the HTML source to see if an extra <p> or <br> was added. Please note, a full carriage return [enter], it will give you a <p> paragraph break, whereas, if you hold down the [shift key] and [enter] it will give you a <br> line break.

3. Bullets – ordered and unordered

a.       Challenge: When putting in ordered bullets, sometimes the numbers won’t line up properly especially when there are 2, 3, level of bullets.

b.      Solution: Add all the text before putting in the bullets, make sure where there are supposed to be bullets, you have a full carriage return between each one, then highlight this list, and then apply the bullet icon.

All HTML tags need an open and close tag, for example <tag>information goes here</tag>

Tag Purpose Examples
<p></p> paragraph
<br> or </br> Line break
<ol> </ol> Ordered List (1, 2, 3, I, ii, iii) <OL > or <OL> or <OL > or <OL >
<ul> </ul> Unordered List (bullet formats) Or <UL > for square bullet
<li> </li> bullet
<i> </i> Italic
<em> </em> emphasized
<table> </table> Insert a table
<strong> </strong> Bold
<b> </b> Bold
<tr> </tr> Insert a table row
<td> </td> Insert a table cell
<span> </span> Attribute, formatting style
<span>
<div> </div> container <div>
<tr align=”center”></tr> Align table row center
<tr align=”left”></tr> Align table row left
<tr align=”right”></tr> Align table row right
<a href=””> </a> link <a href=”/membership-benefits” title=””>Benefits</a>
<img src=””> image <img src=”http://www.ydomain.ca/images/89/newlogo.jpg” alt=”keyword” title=”keyword phrase” width=”280″ height=”210″ />
<h1> </h1> Header 1 Largest heading
<h2> </h2> Header 2
<h3> </h3> Header 3
<h4> </h4> Header 4
<h5> </h5> Header 5
<h6> </h6> Header 6 Smallest heading
&nbsp; Non-breaking space Good for indenting
Copyright
Trademark
Registered
Less Than
Greater Than
Ampersand
Quote
Apostrophe
Cent
Euro
One quarter
One half
Three quarters
Degrees
Larger middle dot
©
™
®
<
>
&
”
‘
¢
€
¼
½
¾
°
•
&copy;
&#153;
&reg; or &#174;
&lt;
&gt;
&amp;
&quot;
&#39;
&#162;
&euro; or &#8364;
&#188;
&#189;
&#190;
&#176;
&#149;
<title> </title> title

An element that has an opening and closing tag is referred to as a container element because anything contained between these tags are affected by the element.

Closing Tags cannot be placed just anywhere. Use the “Last In = First Out” principle or “LIFO”. That is, the “Last” tag “In” must be the “First” tag “Out”. Another way of stating this is that the last tag activated must be the first tag terminated. An example of a correct sequence of tags is:

<tag1><tag2> statements </tag2></tag1>

So when you look at the code, you don’t have to get too scared off,  just reference this table to see what those tags mean. When in doubt, just give Jemma a call, 416-451-2063

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Categories : How To...
Tags : container, editor, elements, HTML, tag, WYSIWYG

The Importance of a Title Tag

By Jemma Fong · Comments (0)
Wednesday, September 9th, 2009

The title tag, one of the most important factors in achieving high search engine rankings. Title tags are equally important as your visible text copy. It defines the title of the document and is required in all HTML/XHTML documents. First of all let’s not get it confused with your main heading on the page. It is actually located in the top line of your browser (blue background for IE and black background for Firefox, right beside their icons). This can either be inserted by your developer through the meta tags, or you can use content management applications that may have this function.

Sample of title tag and where you can find it

Sample of title tag and where you can find it

Here are some guidelines in its usage:

  • Google currently displays less than 64 characters, some longer in other search engines
  • The title should contain your most important keyword phrase first, along with some other relevant keywords that best describe what the page is about
  • Each page should have its own unique title
  • Use your visible text copy as your guide to writing the best title, however, don’t use exact copy taken straight out of your copy
  • If you use CMS like WordPress, use the SEO Title Tag plug-in to get around the automated feature of WordPress
  • For other CMS, ask your developer if they can give you control over the Title Tag editing
  • Each title should be typed in the proper case, see http://www.writersblock.ca/tips/monthtip/tipmar98.htm for discussion on Capitalization of Titles
  • The title must be able to stand on its own and clearly communicate the contents of the page to the reader.
  • Home page titles should clearly indicate what is available on the page and your organizations name

Extra Title Tag considerations:

Sampling of Title displays in Search Results:

On Google, the title tag above will appear like this:
Creating Title Tags for Search Engine Optimization & Web Usability …

On Yahoo, the title will appear like this:
Creating Title Tags for Search Engine Optimization & Web Usability – Search Engine Marketing FAQ

Yahoo! has an absolute cutoff in presenting titles of exactly 120 characters, which is substantially longer and gives the webmaster much more room to present longer titles. If your title exceeds 120 characters, the title will simply be cropped, whether the display title ends in a complete word or not.

AltaVista, AllTheWeb, Google, MSN, and Yahoo! will display the copyright symbol(©), the trademark symbol (™), and the registered trademark symbol (®) in titles. You can use © or ™ to put the Copyright symbol in your title, ™ or ™ to put the Trademark symbol in your title, and ® to put the Registered Trademark symbol in your title, and all will appear correctly in AltaVista, AllTheWeb, Google, MSN, and Yahoo!, as well as others.

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Categories : SEO Search Engine Optimization
Tags : characters, Google, HTML, SEO Search Engine Optimization, title tag, XHTML, yahoo
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