We rolled into sunny and hot hot HOT Largo, Florida, last night at around 1:00AM. Good lord, it’s muggy here…it really makes you appreciate the air conditioning!

We plan to hit the beach sometime today. It’s so pretty here and there are palm trees everywhere. We are staying with a really good friend of mine down here. We still need to stop and get my mom a Florida magnet.

It’s 90 degrees down here now and it’s seriously hot. We’re happy to get a good night’s sleep!

We drove for about eight and a half hours to get here from Atlanta. We got stopped for quite a bit in Atlanta, due to the heavy rain. And a big ‘thank you’ to that SUV guy who sloshed rain all over my car so I couldn’t see for a hot minute…the dork!

Back later!

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We finally rolled into Georgia last night at around 10:30pm. That was a heck of a drive, all the way from Ohio. I’ve come to find that I still don’t care for Kentucky, no matter how nice the people are, and that Tennessee traffic is horrendous at rush hour. We waded through a 20 minute traffic jam that seemed like forever.

Here are the numbers from the trip:
We stopped 3 times to have a bite to eat
We gassed up once before leaving & once on the way (1 & 1/2 tank trip…not too shabby)
We saw a ton of cops
3 or 4 people pulled over (not us, yay)
1 accident (the guy driving was okay, his car, not so much)
1 traffic delay
1 Chick-fil-a (Cleveland needs one of these, it’s rockin’)
We drove through 2 states to get to Georgia (Kentucky & Tennessee)
700 miles
1 picture (we’re going to take more for your viewing pleasure shortly)
0 cups of coffee for me
5th floor hotel room (did I mention I’m afraid of heights?)

Be back later on, they’re serving breakfast downstairs….

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Hyperlinks

Hyperlinks are the foundation of web page navigation on the Internet. They allow us to move from page to page by simply clicking on the highlighted text or image. Hyperlinks are usually underlined and cause your mouse cursor to change to the “hand” when you move your mouse over them.

Hyperlinks are also useful for allowing your readers to jump to a specific section of your page via a bookmark, rather than jumping to a completely different page. Try these bookmarks: Top of Page and Bottom of Page

Anchor (Hyperlink)

Tag: <A>
End Tag Required: Yes

Example:
Visit NewBlogger.net to learn <a href=”http://newblogger.net”>how to start a blog</a>.

Results:
Visit NewBlogger.net to learn how to start a blog.

A link to another web page always has at least two parts: the URL and anchor text. The URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is the address to documents or other resources on the World Wide Web. Anchor text is the word or phrase which is enclosed by the anchor tag, <a>. You can also place a link on an image in instead of using anchor text.

URL: HREF Attribute

Usage: href="insert an address here“

The href attribute tells the browser which address to navigate to when the link is clicked. The address value can be either an absolute or relative link. Here are the differences between relative and absolute links.

Anchor Text

Usage: <a href="contact.html">insert anchor text here</a>

The anchor text is inserted between the opening and closing tags of the anchor element, just like you would use a paragraph tag.

You should pay attention to the words or phrases you enclose within your anchor tags because search engines value quality anchor text. Try to use words and phrases that will help drive organic search traffic to your site.

Read more »

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I first wanted to name this post, “Who’s mug is in your box?”, but that can probably be taken the wrong way…

I never really paid a lot of attention to how many times I’ve actually checked my Mybloglog widget box to see all kinds of names, old and new. It is definitely a treat to see a lot of new faces coming to my blog to have a look around.

If you haven’t gotten a widget for this cool service yet, what are you waiting for? We are all a little voyeuristic in a sense and I can’t help to reload my page on high traffic days just to see who’s taking a peek at what I have to say. I guess it goes along with being addicted to stats.

Who’s mug have you seen in your widget lately? Have you hopped around to see who visits other blogs in your community? Any surprising mugs you’ve noticed?

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This is part 2 in the series of articles covering the basics of HTML.  Today we will cover paragraphs and line breaks, simple text alignment, and headings. Let’s get started.

HTML Element Attributes

In Part 1, we learned that HTML markup tags tell the browser how to display the text that is enclosed inside the tag.  These markup tags are also called HTML elements.  The only reason I mention this is because I don’t want you to be confused by the language when we start talking about element attributes.

An HTML element attribute is simply a setting that’s applied to the element to modify its default behavior.  Attributes are always used in name/value pairs and the value should be enclosed within double quotes.  You should always use lower case attribute names in your HTML elements.

If you need to modify more than one attribute on an element, you separate each attribute with a single space, like this:

<img src="image.gif" alt="My Image" />

Paragraphs and Line Breaks

Paragraphs help authors divide their thoughts and ideas into sections which highlight a particular point or topic.  Each paragraph is separated by a single line of white space.

Unlike a paragraph, a line break does not leave any white space between lines.  They allow you to break your text to the next line without leaving a gap between each line of text.  Personally, I like using the line break when I make a list of links or want to group things together.  You can see the difference in the examples below.

Paragraph

The paragraph tag does not require a closing tag, but it’s a good idea to get in the habit of closing this tag, especially if you are going to use it for aligning text. 

Tag: <P>
End Tag Required: No

Examples:
<p>This is paragraph 1...</p>
<p>This is paragraph 2...</p>

Results:
This is paragraph 1…

This is paragraph 2…

Line Break

The line break tag is one of the in-line tags in the HTML specification, which means it does not need a closing tag and does not surround any text.  You simply place the <br> tag anywhere you want the text to break to the next line.  Although, you should get in the habit of closing this tag to maintain compatibility with XHTML.

Tag: <BR>
End Tag Required: No, but it should be closed like this:  <br />

Examples:
This is Line 1...<br />
This is Line 2...<br />

Results:
This is Line 1…
This is Line 2…

Text Alignment

Since we are just getting started with HTML, I’m going to show you a quick and dirty way to align text.  This method has been deprecated in favor of CSS stylesheets, but I think it is useful nonetheless.  We will revisit text positioning when we discuss the basics of CSS.

Using the Paragraph Tag to Align Text

By default, the paragraph tag aligns text to the left, just as you would expect in any word processor.  To modify the default alignment of a body of text, you simply change value of the “align” attribute.  Here are the acceptable values for the “align” attribute:

• left - aligns text to the left. (default)
• right - aligns text to the right.
• center - aligns text in the center.
• justify - text is justified to both margins.  (think of a newspaper column)

Examples:

<p> or <p align="left">
This text is aligned left

<p align="right">
This text is aligned right

<p align="center">
This text is aligned in the center

<p align="justify">

This text is justified to both margins. You really need a few sentences to properly illustrate the effect of justified text, so I’ll just continue to ramble for a little while so you can see it in action. You’ll notice that the words are spaced so that the text consumes both the right and left margins.

Heading Tags

Heading tags allow you to quickly define the structure and organization of your page.   Most browsers display these tags using large bold folds which gradually get smaller to indicate the importance of each respective section.  You should use these tags to outline your posts something like this:

• <h1>Page Title or Primary Topic</h1>
  • <h2>Main Section 1</h2>
    • <h3>Subsection 1</h3>
  • <h2>Main Section 2</h2>
    • <h3>Subsection 1</h3>
    • <h3>Subsection 2</h3>
      • <h4>Sub-Subsection 1</h4>
      • <h4>Sub-Subsection 2</h4>
    • <h3>Subsection 3</h3>
  • <h2>Main Section 3</h2>
    • <h3>etc…</h3>

The Heading 1 tag should contain the page title or primary topic and should only be used once per page.  Search engines place considerable importance on keywords found in the Heading 1 tag, so make sure you write effective post titles.

At a minimum, you should also use Heading 2 and Heading 3 tags to separate your content into digestible chunks.  These tags make your posts scannable and much easier to read.  The remaining tags are used much less, but are still valuable if you are writing a large article or a page with lots of content.

Headings

Tags: <H1>, <H2>, <H3>, <H4>, <H5>, <H6>
End Tag Required: Yes

Examples:
<h1>Heading 1</h1>
<h2>Heading 2</h2>
<h3>Heading 3</h3>
<h4>Heading 4</h4>
<h5>Heading 5</h5>
<h6>Heading 6</h6>

Results:

Heading 1

Heading 2

Heading 3

Heading 4

Heading 5

Heading 6

If you are reading this post on my blog instead of in an RSS reader, you might notice the styles of these heading tags do not necessarily represent an outline format.  The reason for this is due to the CSS formatting applied to the heading tags by my WordPress theme.  Here are the same heading examples in raw HTML format.

The next part in this series will cover hyperlinks and bookmarks.

Part 1 - Intro and Basic HTML Text Formatting
Part 2 - Paragraphs and Line Breaks, Text Alignment, and Headings

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I was reading the huge response that Bloggrrl received over her three little blogs post, and it got me to thinking. What do we do when we’ve hit a road bump in the everyday blogging? Do we sit up at night deliriously writing just to be goofy? Thinking that maybe our silly words have fallen into the abyss of the internet?

Maybe that’s when the creativity comes and then you can just run with it. Take the time to think about why you’ve hit a slump and maybe go with it. In writing, we’re told that if we’ve got writer’s block, just write. Write about anything, just write. Creativity will come to you, sooner or later.

Brainstorm. Think of all of the things that you know and the things that you won’t get bored about. Maybe you’re in the wrong niche market, if boredom is something that happens when you write regularly.

Be funny. If you can manage to pull off humor, then go for it. I don’t know how many times I’ve read posts that have literally cracked me up.

If you’ve hit a slump in writing, what tips can you provide to the rest of us that may help us when we’ve hit rock bottom? Any words of encouragement? Would you suggest throwing up a speedlinking post just for the sake of having something?

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Hello again, my friends…

I just wanted to give everyone an update on the contest that I’ve got going on that ends today. I’ll be closing off the entries for the contest at 4pm EST and drawing a name out of a hat for the winner at 5pm. Get your entries in now so that you can get this is in the mail asap. It’s a great CD and your chances are really good.

Enter here by leaving a comment on that post. Good luck to all who enter!

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This is the first in a series of articles to help teach you the basics of HTML.  We’ll start with the easy stuff first and move into some more advanced topics as the series progresses.  Enjoy!

What is HTML?

HTML is an acronym which stands for Hyper Text Markup Language.  HTML is simply text that contains markup tags to tell your web browser how to display the page. 

One of the things I really like about HTML is it’s simplicity.  The HTML tags are fairly straight forward and you don’t need any special software programs to write it.  You can create your masterpiece using only a plain text editor.

HTML Markup Tags

HTML tags tell the web browser exactly what to do with the text that is enclosed inside the tag.  These HTML commands, always begin and end with <triangle brackets> (less than and greater than symbols, respectively) and most tags should be closed like this: </triangle brackets>.  The slash at the beginning of the closing tag tells the browser to stop applying the current formatting and resume the formatting of the previous tag it encountered.

Here’s a simple example:

This <strong>text is bold</strong> and this text is normal.

This text is bold and this text is normal.

Always use lower case for your HTML tags and never forget to close them.  If you get in the habit of following these two simple rules, you ensure the most compatibility with the HTML and XHTML specifications.  Plus, it will save you hours of debugging when you forget to close a <tr> tag in a table. 

One final note on closing HTML tags:  Some tags such as the line break <br> and image tag <img> do not require a closing tag, but can still be closed.  In these cases, you’ll close these tags like this: 

<br />
<img src="image.gif" alt="My Image" />

Do you see the difference?  The closing slash is included at the end of the tag but before the greater than symbol.  Don’t worry, I’ll tell you if the tag should closed or not when we get to them.

Nesting Tags

HTML tags can also be nested inside of each other to apply multiple formatting to the same text.  Just make sure you close the tags in the order they were opened.

Here’s an example:

The quick <strong>brown fox <strike>jumped</strike> jumps</strong> over the lazy dog.

The quick brown fox jumped jumps over the lazy dog.

Basic Text Formatting

Let’s start with some basic text formatting.  The following examples illustrate the following commands: bold, italics, underline, and strike through.

Bold Text

There are two tags you can use to bold text: <strong> and <b>.  You can use either of these tags as you wish, but I recommend using the <strong> tag to make your code more readable.

Tag: <STRONG>
End Tag Required: Yes

Example: The quick brown fox jumps over the <strong>lazy dog</strong>.
Result:The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

Tag: <B>
End Tag Required: Yes

Example: The quick brown fox jumps over the <b>lazy dog</b>.
Result:The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

Emphasised Text (Italics)

Tag: <EM>
End Tag Required: Yes

Example: The quick brown fox <em>jumps over</em> the lazy dog.
Result: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

Underlined Text

Tag: <U>
End Tag Required: Yes

Example: The <u>quick brown fox</u> jumps over the lazy dog.
Result: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

Strike Through

Tag: <STRIKE>
End Tag Required: Yes

Example: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy <strike>cat</strike> dog.
Result:The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy cat dog.

The next part in this series will cover paragraphs and line breaks, headings, and text alignment.  Stay tuned.

Part 1 - Intro and Basic HTML Text Formatting
Part 2 - Paragraphs and Line Breaks, Text Alignment, and Headings

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This post was written to be a part of eMomsAtHome’s Second Group Writing Project. I decided to put this in the mix regarding the topic of Recognizing others’ blog efforts and reaching out to others.

When looking through my archives, I’ve noticed that certain posts have garnered a lot more attention that others. My most commented post is the one when I started the Rockin’ Girl Blogger craze. That post alone got 60 comments and trackbacks. Pretty nifty for a new blog, eh?

My second most commented post was the “face behind the blog” meme. Including doing the actual posting where you let others in on a little bit about yourself, the idea was to pass around the link love. This post received 29 comments by itself.

Do you know what these two posts have in common? Sure, they’re memes, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Both of these ideas got people to talking, commenting, and sharing. The first, got the ladies to pass on the praise and the recognition to other fellow female bloggers who they felt are doing a fantastic job in the blogosphere. The other, got us to open up and give a little bit of a glimpse into the people behind the words. I know that I really enjoy reading about other bloggers. When first talking with other bloggers, I want to know where they’re from and what they do. I ask other questions to see if we have any other similarities, other than blogging. People generally migrate to those with whom they share common interests.

In blogging, I have a tendency to stick around those blogs that have the same central theme as my own. Within my circle, I read what my blogging friends have to say, if I have a genuine interest, then I comment, and if I feel strongly about the subject, I write a post of my own.

How do you build connections?

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Yesterday, I took the day off from blogging, much to my surprise, there was a buzz floating around the blogosphere. Jon Warass started a service that will allow you to buy blog comments. Notice that I did not link to this guy. Unfortunately, other more popular bloggers did.

This has drummed up the exact amount of marketing that Jon didn’t have to do to achieve his goal of getting the word out, with very little effort. He made something so devious and leaked word about it, only to get linked to by a lot of well-known bloggers.

I will not use this service, so if you ever get a comment from me, know that it’s legit. I will never recommend a service like this, it’s ultimately a really bad move for anyone looking to keep any credibility regarding blogging.

So, I’m going to treat Jon Warass like Paris Hilton, if I ignore him, maybe he’ll go away.

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