Cs42

Within these castle walls be forged Mavens of Computer Science ...

— Merlin, The Coder

1. CS42

HTML Basics

I'm sure you have used websites before. A great example is www.youtube.com! YouTube has something interesting for almost everyone. Think about what interests you. What do you like to watch on YouTube?

YouTube is one example out of many other websites. Websites are like online pictures or papers that you can visit using a computer. Here are some more examples of websites:

• <https://www.nasa.gov/>
• <https://www.allenisd.org/>
• <https://wikipedia.org>

You can visit many websites—each one for a different purpose. Some websites are used for fun, some are used to teach people, and many others for other reasons.

Have you ever wondered how these websites are created? You can't build them using Legos or clay, can you? Although you can't built a website using your hands, you can using a computer! All websites are created using a tool called "HTML."

HTML stands for "Hypertext Markup Language," but you don't need to remember that to build your own website.

To make a website using HTML, all you need to know is tags. HTML tags are used to create parts of a website, like pictures and words. Here are some examples of tags:

• "< p >" - The paragraph tag. This adds words to your website
• "< img >" - The image tag. This adds pictures to your website

Many more tags are available—all waiting for you to learn. Once you learn about them, you can use them to build your own website.

But before that, you need a plan. You should first draw on a sheet of paper what you want your website to look like. Try to be creative, and make it all about you!