Once the HTML editor is installed, you are ready to begin construction. The first thing to do is to orient yourself to the HTML editor. Most products have good tutorial and "help" features that will explain how to use the tool. In general, however, they are intuitive and function much like word processors.

HTML editors let you insert images into the body of a document and create hyperlinks to other pages. They also permit you to reference a file to be used as a background image. Most HTML editors allow you to insert additional HTML code wherever you like. This is useful, for example, should you want to add a page counter, music or video clip to your site.

Hyperlinks are words or graphics on a web page that, when clicked, take the visitor to another page or another web site. To add a hyperlink, you simply highlight the text field or graphic, select the hyperlink icon and specify the destination address (URL). You should specify the full URL address.

Your main page should always be assigned the file name "index.htm". Other pages on your web site can be assigned any names you wish however keep them short and avoid using special characters. (e.g. #, @). For simplicity, all web page file names should end with ".htm".

If you feel really brave, you can write your HTML program using a simple text editor such as WordPad rather than using an HTML Editor. WordPad is a utility program that comes bundled with Microsoft operating systems (e.g. Windows XP).

To begin, find a simple web page on the Internet that you like and save it to your directory. Copy the graphics from that same web page to your hard drive. Print off the HTML code and see how it works! You can then make some minor changes to the HTML and watch the results in your web browser (i.e. Netscape or Explorer). Don't forget to save your program changes and "reload" your page in your browser. This method is not recommended for everyone, but is a very good way to learn HTML.

There are plenty of good HTML programming guides available on the Internet which explain the basic syntax of the HTML language. Tools are also available to validate the HTML that you write.