# Another stupid question...about those mysterious </p></div> tags



## rosebud0419 (Aug 13, 2005)

I read someplace that after you have your DOCTYPE attributes placed correctly on each page, you then close the page with

and the usual . In using the p-div closing tags, does this mean I can dispense with such tags as [/B], , [/CENTER] and so forth? I've been trying to surf for info on this, but the more I read, the more confused I get (as usual!). I'm deeply into making corrections on each and every site page...and thought I ought to ask about this before proceeding any farther.

thanks

rosebud


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## colinsp (Sep 5, 2007)

You only close an open tag. So you only use

if you have a matching

earlier in your code. Each tag does something different. You need to read up on tags and what they do. You will need the * tag to bold text for instance and once you have finished bolding text you turn it off with *. Go to the W3C schools it is a great website that explains all about tags etc or get yourself a good HTML programming book that expalins it all.


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## Hughv (Jul 22, 2006)

Post the URL and we can be more helpful.


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## rosebud0419 (Aug 13, 2005)

I will give you some examples of what I did:

An example that is finished and *probably* correct--

http://gardenofdreams.izfree.com/HTML/galleryofheroes_dir.html

One that may not be correct--

http://gardenofdreams.izfree.com/HTML/fanlistings.html


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## Hughv (Jul 22, 2006)

The W3c validation service show 25 errors and suggests corrections:
http://validator.w3.org/
Don't worry too mch about the "alt" errors, but you have close your tags.
Your text should be configured in your style sheet to make your markup easier to read(and to edit).
I think most people would say the background is too busy, and detracts from the text.
Use a left align for the text (IMHO), as "center" makes it hard to read.


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## rosebud0419 (Aug 13, 2005)

I don't even have a style sheet of my own (the only one being, what goes along with my new index layout, a freebie from an online source). Over the years I've struggled with hand coding, things that look like what you see on this page:

http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_intro.asp

On there, it looks as though I wouldn't even need the closing p tags and div tags. I understand what the closing

tag is for. But with such basic pages as mine are, I'm not sure what the div tag does for me.

But that's the sort of really basic html I've 'made do' with for a long time...  I am seriously out of date!


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## colinsp (Sep 5, 2007)

Looking at your code it is totally incorrect even on the page that you think is OK.

You have loads of opening

tags and no closing

tags. Every time you have a

you must have a matching

at the end of the paragraph. You have a closing div tag at the end of the page but no corresponding opening div tag so it can be deleted.

As I said above get yourself a book or read and understand the w3c schools site.

As an example to help you


```
<p>
A final note:  I hope everyone has Java and can view the<br>
Anfy manips (I should have several of these eventually),<br>
they are well worth checking out! 
[B][COLOR="Red"]</p>[/COLOR][/B]
```
You need to have that

closing tag after the paragraph.


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## Hughv (Jul 22, 2006)

I just took a look at your site, and have to tell you I was a huge Hercules fan as well, but Xena was my favorite. Some of the best TV I ever saw was in these two shows.
As for the page, we can help you fix it, but HTML is a very forgiving code as you can see by the fact that your page works.
As for the style sheet, they are relatively easy to create if you want to learn more.


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## rosebud0419 (Aug 13, 2005)

That would have been my next question, about the closing of

tags. Over all these years I *never* saw a paragraph tag closed, not in the old basic html that is. So...hmm, OK, I see what you mean about the index page (well, it soon will be an index page, at the moment it's an entry page) and the gallery page. Those wouldn't be any real problem to fix. Trouble is...I have about a hundred fiction pages... oh em gee  and you can guess what they look like! Yet, strangely enough, they do work fine.

On the galleries page I formerly did have the text aligned to the left, but without knowing how to use an align tag. So how would I do that?

I've been trying to use NotePad++ also and discovered a neat function that allows you to alter tags universally, like on all pages throughout a folder. It would be nice if they would invent a way to let us change blocks of text universally rather than just one line.

Hey, it's great to know of yet another Hercules AND Xena fan out there! I loved both the series about equally well.


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## Hughv (Jul 22, 2006)

In the old days, most people didn't close the

tag, but it's good form to do so now.
I'm semi-busy at the moment, but I'll look at this later and give you some ideas.
You might want to look into an HTML editor, which makes all this much easier.
I use HTML-Kit:
http://www.chami.com/html-kit/
There are many others.


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## rosebud0419 (Aug 13, 2005)

Yeah, are'nt we all at least semi-busy, LOL. I'm like the little old woman living in the shoe...she had so many projects she didn't know what to do 

OK, I was kinda hoping someone would point out an editor that would help me with all this. I did take another look at the 'beginner HTML' page on w3schools and...lo and behold...there was a closing tag for the brief 'test' sentence! Opening tag

and closing tag right at the end. I didn't see that before!

Been looking at other sites similar to mine, sites I got my ideas from (having no inkling that they were, or soon would be, considered outmoded in their style), and I see that many of them were created on Angelfire or some other kind of pagemaker that still exists on such hosts out there. And I've surfed recently and found there are a lot of others. I thought this might help me, but I like my current host too much to move! To use the pagemakers you have to submit your site on *their* URL. I even experimentally tried one of the pagemakers and didn't care for it at all, I didn't seem to have any control over what I was doing. And I do like to have control! 

Going to see that editor now...thanks, I really need a 'magic blender' to put all my pages into and presto, they're all correct and up to date!


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## Hughv (Jul 22, 2006)

You should like using an editor.
Once you open your page in HTML Kit, press F9 to see all the known errors. A very handy way to check your tags.
It's a bit more sophisticated than some editors-I don't use all its capabilities.


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## rosebud0419 (Aug 13, 2005)

I downloaded and now I think I'm already an HTML-Kit fan! I'm in the "poking at it" stages.

I didn't know about F9; but I brought up the first html page in the folder and "tidied" it, then saved it. It put in all the closing paragraph tags, yeeeeee.  And it explained other things, why they are incorrect. It even said I'm not using the proper DOCTYPE header, uh oh! I can't figure out how to change that w/o making entirely new files.

But how would I globally manage the entire folder of pages? I looked into the Plugins section online and it shows HTML Tidy, and it's very nice to have a means of automatically "fixing" each page. But I'd like to hit the whole folder and have done with it! I trust HTML Tidy knows more than I do about what is correct.

OK, I figured out how to globally manage a folder...subfolder, actually...but it keeps telling me it's logged 1000 events and please refine my file options or whatever, and try again. That's why I placed all my pages neatly into subfolders and tried to "fix" one of those. It appears that I may *have* to edit each page individually.... *sigh* At least it's putting all those missing tags onto each page, yaay for that.

(Later...) Ohno, the Kit is messing up my fonts!! Makes me wish I had just opted for default...I even tried search and replace to make the verdana font go back to size "2" rather than "3" and it still won't do it...

Can't upload .html files on here, so here's a sampling to show what is happening:
______________

"Does everything die when
it gets older?" Melaegus asked.

"Yes, Mel, everything dies
when it gets older."

"You're real old.
When are you going to die?" he asked.

Iolaus chuckled. The boy was too
young for Iolaus to explain his many trips into the underworld.
Instead, he pacified the child by stating, "Hopefully, not
until I can get you back home to your father."

This seemed to satisfy
Melaegus.

"When a tree dies, it
begins to rot," Iolaus said as he continued with the story.
He walked over to the decaying log. Bending at the knees, he
began scooping out the rich humus from under the log. He sifted
through the pile of dirt, searching for the reason they had come
this way.

"What are you looking
for?" the young boy asked.

"All sorts of bugs are
attracted to this kind of dirt." Finally, after he had
removed three piles of dirt, Iolaus found what he was looking
for. "WORMS!" he exclaimed as he pulled out a long,
brown, moving earthworm.

"Mel, open your
hand," Iolaus prompted.

The boy held out both of his
tiny hands. He closed his eyes in unpleasant anticipation. Iolaus
placed three earthworms in his palm.

"They tickle,"
Melaegus laughed, "but Iolaus? What do worms have to do
with trees?"

Iolaus had to think about it.
"Well," he began, "if we didn't find the
worms for fishing then the birds would, and they wouldn't
be eating the acorns, so they wouldn't drop the acorn seed,
so a new tree wouldn't grow, and we couldn't find a
good fishing stick, and then we couldn't find a dead tree
so we could find the worms. See, it's a circle. Now,
let's go fishing." Iolaus offered before Melaegus
could ask any more questions.

Protectively, Iolaus asked,
"Do you want to bait the hook or shall I?"

"Can you?" the boy
asked, unsure of himself.

"Sure. We'll do it
at the stream." The two traveled toward Iolaus'
favorite fishing hole. The hunter wrapped a loving arm around the
young boy as they went.

<img border="0"
src=
"http://gardenofdreams.izfree.com/Graphics/wood_button_back.gif">​


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## Hughv (Jul 22, 2006)

Here's a crude beginning using css only.
Note that the layout is in a separate style sheet, "dreams.css" that must be placed in the same folder.
This is a very flexible layout that should wok in all browsers and complies with modern standards.
The W3c Tryit editor is here, and will save you a lot of time as well as give you some practice:
http://www.w3schools.com/css/default.asp


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## rosebud0419 (Aug 13, 2005)

Thank you! :up: I have come to understand a few of the tags commonly seen in CSS, I just need to learn from 'the ground up' how to put it all together.

In the HTML-Kit, it looked like the program was trying to turn my poor simple little pages into something like XHTML, I noticed the disturbing frequency of those &quot kind of marks showing up all thru the document. Especially on that last one...

I suppose there would be a means of stripping out the 'old' font tags (in HTML-Kit)? As stated on my index/entry page, I learned how to turn ClearType on in Settings, and I love it. Makes even default fonts look readable. Before ClearType, the text on my pages looked good in IE but terrible in Firefox. Now it looks fine either way


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## Hughv (Jul 22, 2006)

Look n the edit menu for "Find", and replace "" with (Blank). Same with any other tags.
You can set your DocType in Edit/Preferences.Startup
You probably want something likeInstead of XHTML)
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">


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## rosebud0419 (Aug 13, 2005)

OH! Is that with parentheses?? Kewl....there's got to be an answer to this issue. It seems so...simple! Seems I ought to be able to easily convert such basic pages.

I don't like XHTML, I don't fancy all the gobbledy-****.

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">, I thought that was what I had... And the odd thing was when HTML-kit pointed up the errors, it said my header looked like--there is another kind of Transitional that it named...

Oddly, I put in a page of plain text, no BG and no imagery...and it said it looked like HTML 3.2 or some such...

Just checked, this DOCTYPE (above) is exactly what I've got. And after it comes:

"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">

Is that OK or could it be causing me a problem?


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## Hughv (Jul 22, 2006)

Maybe, but just take the changes and apply them and all should be well.


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## rosebud0419 (Aug 13, 2005)

I find that I couldn't take your advice literally, LOL, I had to clear the 'replace with' option to a true blank...

That's what I've been doing the whole time, though, in searching and replacing. In other programs this can even be done 'universally,' a whole folder can be altered this way...although blocks of text can't be changed, only single tags or phrases. 

I downloaded a batch-convert plugin from HTML-Kit but I still can't get it to recognize what I'm trying to do, across my entire folder. Any ideas? Seems that if other more 'ordinary' editors can do that, HTML-Kit should be able to.


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## Hughv (Jul 22, 2006)

A true blank is what I meant.
You can do a whole page at one time, but you need so many changes that you're probably better off re-writing from scratch.
I usually get my template set up, then just copy text, etc. to the proper and go from there.
The easiest way is to use an existing page, then "Save as" a new page when the editing is done.


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## rosebud0419 (Aug 13, 2005)

Yeah....wow....the whole site would take me 5 years to fix and clean up entirely...

I found a page that contains no font tags. Thought default fonts would make the problem easier. Tried fixing it with the "tidy" online version (couldn't find it back in the program). Still had 142 errors and at least 6 warnings. Ouch. :down:

Might be wise for me to take the fiction etc. pages off and also some "thumbnails" pages and just link to my online-fiction account and my photo service too. That would eliminate some of the website pages...


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## Hughv (Jul 22, 2006)

How many pages?
In any case, get one working right with no errors to start with.
A decent layout with a standard menu would be a good start.


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## rosebud0419 (Aug 13, 2005)

Thought i would try the validators one more time, I had an idea...and I wasn't all that surprised. Tried a 'fiction' page URL, and I'm seeing a pattern. Of course many of my online pages still don't have the DOCTYPE declaration, but this is in the works. Other problems with the random page were those numerous

tags I asked you about...capital letters in tags where they shouldn't be...and a few other things that I don't quite understand. But I definitely see a pattern!  Some of my pages could be fixed to where they would have few, if any, errors.

I have to be absolutely frank, I don't know much about design! (which I realize is no surprise to you either, by this time  ). I'm an artist, true, but webdesign is something I've discovered I am a total dummy about. IMHO my new navigation page is pretty sharp (despite a few flaws in it due to my incompetence). But as for re-designing the entire site otherwise ( and BTW, this particular site does contain almost 200 pages! ) I am not at all sure just how to begin. I have a vague idea of fashioning every page to more or less "echo" the autumn layout design. I would like to continue a 'seasonal' look, however, which is something I've been doing for years. That would mean four times as much work! And then there would be CSS pages too... But my vague ideas for an all-new design escape my limited abilities, I'm afraid...


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## Hughv (Jul 22, 2006)

There's a bout a zillion template sites, and many are very good. 
Find one( or several) you like and go from there. You don't have to do this all in one day,.


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## rosebud0419 (Aug 13, 2005)

Yeah.....LOL....no chance of accomplishing that! Currently my "static" html (I saw a blog recently where someone was referring to it as 'static') functions well enough; and I'm getting the DOCTYPE declarations onto each page...doing it one page at a time... But I've been thinking, are there templates that could be used for the entire site? I mean I already have a navigation page that I'm happy with. (Yes, I agree, there are some really good template sites out there. I enjoyed surfing through them). But the rest of my site is pretty much the same as before. I wish I knew how to match up the other pages to the navigation page.


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## Hughv (Jul 22, 2006)

Post the url of your nav page and some templates you like and we'll see what's possible.


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## rosebud0419 (Aug 13, 2005)

Okay, below is the URL for my entry... I realize this should be my main index page, but I got rid of the large image on the current Index, and the page does download faster (even on dialup). I still kinda like the personal touch, showing off my handmade graphics, etc. I am also on Facebook and the little wooden sign (in miniature) looks very nice on my Links section...

http://gardenofdreams.izfree.com/entry.html

I had the URLs for the other templates I favored, in my History, but I've cleared that, so they aren't around anymore. I'll see if I can dig them up online, though.


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## rosebud0419 (Aug 13, 2005)

Could only find one of them online, tracking down all of them would take days. I managed to zip file each of the best ones I have collected on my hard drive. Had to dig them out...then while attaching I lost the connection here...so now after the 2nd try, here they are!

Some may not appear to be appropriate for my needs. But I envision simply changing images the way I did with my current choice (entry page).

The remainder of the collection is in a second post here.


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## rosebud0419 (Aug 13, 2005)

I would like to keep the 'seasonal' theme going, which is what I've done for years. Of course that means using 4 different templates within a year! But I suppose I could do that...


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## Hughv (Jul 22, 2006)

Your entry page url doesn't work.


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## rosebud0419 (Aug 13, 2005)

It should work.... A quick check of the DNS error msg gives a link to the webhost. I clicked on that and got the same thing. MEANING....izfree is down again!  They've been doing better with their "uptime," but sometimes they still go offline for awhile. Very inconvenient, but still the best host I've found yet...


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## Hughv (Jul 22, 2006)

Still doesn't work.
Pick one template and stick with it.


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## rosebud0419 (Aug 13, 2005)

It's Friday and they STILL aren't back up yet!? GGRR. Now I'm sorry I bragged about them...

OK, I think I have a template now that I could live with year round  - it allows for images, which is what I must have... It's this one:

http://www.oswd.org/design/preview/id/3661

Now to work out how to do up the entire website to "match" this template?


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## Hughv (Jul 22, 2006)

Set up your folders so you can drag/drop in HTML Kit (Or any editor).
I haven't seen your menu yet, but work on that first so you can get your index page looking right.


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## rosebud0419 (Aug 13, 2005)

Izfree.com still isn't working *sigh*. 

By menu, do you mean the navigation menu I presently have on my Entry (should be Index, I know) page, or the layout of the directories in my account area?


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## Hughv (Jul 22, 2006)

I mean site navigation.


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## rosebud0419 (Aug 13, 2005)

That was what I thought you meant.

On the current "entry" page, I have everything lined up in a vertical row. That layout doesn't have a horizontal menu. I know that any number of homepage menus can be used, in two, three or even four columns. But I don't really need that many menus. One is good enough, two at the absolute most. Three columns would be OK, but what on earth would I do with them all...?

A few of the templates that I favor have a horizontal menu, but they only have 4 or 5 buttons. I'm sure a more generalized link could lead to a sub-menu somewhere. But, I was just trying to keep things simple, since the site is basically not that complex.

Still waiting on izfree to come back online! Surely by today sometime...but who knows with them.


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