Basic HTML Template Structure and Layout

A basic HTML template is the foundation of any website, and its structure and layout are crucial for creating a visually appealing and user-friendly interface. The template typically consists of a doctype declaration, an html tag, and a head and body section.

The head section contains metadata about the document, such as the title, charset, and links to external stylesheets and scripts. The title tag, for example, is a required element that provides a concise summary of the page's content.

The body section is where the content of the page is placed. This section includes the header, navigation, main content, and footer. The header and footer elements are used to define the top and bottom sections of the page, respectively.

Related reading: Html Header Coding

The head tag is a crucial part of your website's HTML template.

It houses the metadata of your website, which is visually invisible to the user but provides important information about your website's content.

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Search engines especially use this data to rank your website.

Metadata in the head tag includes meta tags, title tags, link tags, scripts, stylesheets, and more.

The head tag contains important information about the document that isn't displayed to the end user.

This information is used by machines such as browsers, search engines, and screen readers.

The title text, which appears in online searches and in browser tabs, is an exception to this rule and is visible to end users.

The body tag is a crucial part of your HTML document, housing all the visible content that users see on your website.

It's where you add headings, paragraphs, media, and lots more, making it the core of your website's structure. Any element not included in the body tag won't be shown on the screen.

The body tag is where you put text, images, and other elements that you want to display in the browser. It's the section between the opening and closing body tags that makes your website come alive.

You can add non-visible elements like style and script to the body tag if needed, but most of the time, it's all about making the content visible to your users.

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Character Encoding is a crucial aspect of HTML5 templates, and in nearly all cases, UTF-8 is the value you should use in your documents.

This encoding covers a wide range of characters not included in other encodings, including the many characters of languages across the globe and lots of useful symbols.

You've probably come across weird characters on the Web that were obviously a mistake, and this often happens because the browser can't find the intended character in the character set that's been specified in the document.

A Unicode-based encoding such as UTF-8 can support many languages and can accommodate pages and forms in any mixture of those languages.

Its use also eliminates the need for server-side logic to individually determine the character encoding for each page served or each incoming form submission.

If this caught your attention, see: Html Text Encoding

Meta tags are a crucial part of your website's metadata, which is housed in the head tag. This data is invisible to users but provides essential information about your website's content.

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Search engines rely heavily on this metadata to rank your website, so it's essential to get it right. The head tag includes various types of metadata, such as meta tags, title tags, link tags, scripts, and stylesheets.

The viewport meta tag is a specific type of metadata that controls how your website is displayed on different devices. It renders the width of the page to the device's screen size, so if you have a mobile device that's 600px wide, the browser window will also be 600px wide.

The initial-scale attribute of the viewport meta tag controls the zoom level of your website. A value of 1 for the initial-scale prevents the default zoom by browsers.

The body tag is where the magic happens in your HTML template. It's the main container for all the visible content of your website, including headings, paragraphs, media, and more.

The body tag is where you'll add most of the elements that make up your website's content. This includes headings, paragraphs, images, videos, and just about anything else you want users to see.

Non-visible elements like style and script can also be added here, but most body tags are usually visible to users.

Adding a main table is a crucial step in creating a well-designed email. A safe maximum width for emails to display comfortably is 602 pixels, which is what we'll use for our main content table.

This width allows for a 1-pixel border around the outside, adding a pixel on either side. We've already set up our outer table, and now it's time to add the main content table inside.

By setting the width of the main table to 602 pixels, we can ensure that it fits comfortably within most desktop and webmail clients on most screen resolutions. This will help our email design look great on a variety of devices.

For another approach, see: Basic Html Email Template

The main content area is where the magic happens. It's the central part of your web page, where you want to grab your audience's attention. This would be the content related to your website's title, like a blog post page with the post itself showing the cover image, title, and post text content.

Related reading: Html Meta Http-equiv Content-type Content Text Html Charset Utf-8

To create a great content area, consider the following:

Here's a quick rundown of the essential tags for creating a content area:

Remember, the main content area is where your audience will focus their attention, so make sure it's visually appealing and easy to read.

Styling is a crucial step in creating a basic HTML template. You can style the text within your template by updating the paragraph and link in the left column of the top row of content with style and colour.

To get precise spacing for your social media icons, create a table with cells that are each 38px wide plus 10px padding on the left. This will ensure proper rendering everywhere.

In the footer row, add padding to the footer row in your HTML mailer, and link your custom CSS to the HTML page using the code rel="stylesheet".

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We'll add padding to the footer row in our HTML mailer.

Replace the "Left Column" text with a paragraph of text.

This will help create a clean and professional look.

The "Right Column" text should be replaced with a table for social media icons.

This is the best way to achieve precise spacing that renders properly everywhere.

The table width is not specified, allowing it to be determined by the cells within.

Each cell is 38px wide, plus 10px padding on the left.

In a basic HTML template, the doctype declaration is the first line of code, and it's essential to include it to tell the browser how to render the page.

The HTML element is the root element of the document, and it contains all the other elements. It's a container that wraps everything together.

A basic structure includes a head element that contains metadata about the document, such as the title and charset. The title element is displayed in the browser's title bar and is also used by search engines as the title of the page in their results.

Recommended read: Html Text Element

The body element contains the content of the HTML document, including headings, paragraphs, and other elements. It's where you'll put the main content of your webpage.

Links are created using the a element, which is an empty element that doesn't require a closing tag. The href attribute specifies the URL of the linked page.

Images are added to the page using the img element, which requires a src attribute to specify the URL of the image file.