This page is part of the WebCom Web Publishing Guide. It provides details on structural tags, and on tags that can be included in the head section of a HTML document.
These tags should be included in all HTML documents.
The <HTML> tag starts a HTML document. It is matched by a closing </HTML> tag. Programs viewing the document will recognize that it is formatted in HTML as a result of the presence of this tag, even in the absence of a WWW Server.
These tags enclose the head section of a HTML document. This contains information about the document itself (such as indexing information, the title, and who created it). The head section is not just a technical requirement: many WWW searching and indexing services develop their databases using the information contained within it. Documents lacking a head section are skipped, since the command used to gather the information retrieves only the head section.
These tags enclose the body section of a HTML document, which contains the text and images to be displayed by a Web browser.
If a document contains a head, then it really should include a title as well. The other tags are optional.
The text placed between the <TITLE></TITLE> tags will be displayed by the viewing program outside of the document itself. Some Web browsers place the title at the top of the window, others have a special display area for it immediately above the document display area. If a document lacks title tags, the filename is displayed in their place.
Titles are also used by various indexing services, which compile them into a searchable database which creates a list of hotlinks to documents matching a keyword (or multiple keywords). The title of your document should therefore have a logical relationship to the content if you wish people to be able to easily locate it using these services.
Note: the following tags are optional.
"META" tags are placed in key documents that serve as entry points into your site. They contain indexing information describing the content of the document and documents it serves as a gateway to.
<BASE HREF="http://webcom.com/~webcom/userid/path/file.html">
This link should contain the path of the file containing it. This will enable browsers supporting it to find links with paths relative to the the BASE HREF URL, even if it is returned by a program such as the WebCom Form Processor.
If the browser used by the visitor to your site supports this tag (for example: Lynx), the user will be able to include the content of the page in a "comment" (email) to the email address in quotes. When you enter the command to get information about the current page, it may also be displayed there as well.
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