I've tried to get the major bugs out, including correcting the problem with the spaces after the.

I decided to keep the font size command in because, even if it's not used very often, the WOW factor gives great satisfaction to the newbie.

All comments are welcome (I'm skating on very thin ice here).

Claire

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HOW DO I CHANGE THE FONTS AND INSERT STUFF IN MY POSTS?

*INTRODUCTION TO HTML CODE

*ADDING COLORS

*CHANGING FONT SIZE

*MIXING UP THE COMMANDS

*WHAT COLORS CAN I USE?

*WHAT COMMANDS ARE THERE BESIDES COLOR AND SIZE?

*WHERE DID THE TAGS GO?

*HOW DO I INSERT A LINK?

*HOW DO I INSERT A PHOTO?

*REFERENCES

OK, so now you're comfortable with browsing the internet and posting on the Garden Web forums. But you feel your plain-Jane text is boring and lacking those nice, sophisticated flourishes like bold fonts, and underlines, and colors; and you'd like to post hyperlinks and pics like other people do.

You just have no idea how to do it. You've tried all the tricks that work fine in your word-processing programs, but nada, zilch, the web ignores your attempts.

The answer lies in knowing something about how web pages are actually constructed.

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*INTRODUCTION TO HTML CODE

This is not brain surgery (although you can frazzle your brain if you try to leap into HTML (HyperText Markup Language) without an interpreter nearby.

The actual mechanics of setting up a web page is incredibly complicated, but you don't need to know the dirty little details of writing HTML code if all you want to do is underline a word. Just as you don't need to know how to wire your house if all you want to do is turn on a light.

Basically, you start out with some standard text of your choice and then you start adding "document tags" whenever you want to change the appearance of the text, or to determine how a line of words works, or to link up your text with a different site or image.

For example, you might start out with a sentence:

"Yawn, this is even more boring than mowing the lawn."

and then you decide to jazz it up a little by adding tags:

"tagYawnend tag, this is tageven more boringend tag than tagmowing the lawnend tag."

Depending on which tags you chose, you might get this;

"Yawn, this is even more boring than mowing the lawn."

In a post in 2005 cady gave an excellent description of how to change font colors and sizes. With some changes, this is how she explained the procedure: