META TAGS
Where to put the META TAGS:
Meta Tags go between the <HEAD> and the </HEAD> tags along with the TITLE. Using the example from previous lessons of the "For the Birds" page, they would look like this:
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>My Page</TITLE>
<META NAME="description" CONTENT="All about birdwatching, feeding, and attracting">
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="birds, birdwatching, birdfeeder, birdhouse">
<META NAME="expires" CONTENT="01 January 2000">
<META NAME="generator" CONTENT="Notepad">
<META NAME="author" CONTENT="John Doe">
<META NAME="copyright" CONTENT="Copyright © 1999 John Doe">
</HEAD>
<BODY background="sky.jpg" bgcolor="FFFFFF" text="000000" link="0000FF"
etc. etc. etc.
What do the above examples all mean?:
- <META NAME="description" CONTENT="All about birdwatching, feeding, and attracting">
tells the search engine a description to use for your page....otherwise it will use the first words it finds on the page for a description (substitute your own words for CONTENT=)
- <META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="birds, birdwatching, birdfeeder, birdhouse">
tells the search engine what key words to use for the search (substitute your own words for CONTENT=)
- <META NAME="expires" CONTENT="01 January 2000">
tells the browser when to delete this document from its database.......of course this depends on the search engine's Y2K compliability! :) (substitute your own date for CONTENT=)
- <META NAME="generator" CONTENT="Notepad">
tells what program you used to make the HTML document (substitute your own program in CONTENT=)
- <META NAME="author" CONTENT="John Doe">
tells who wrote the HTML document (substitute your own name in CONTENT=)
- <META NAME="copyright" CONTENT="Copyright © 1999 John Doe">
gives copyright info (substitute.....well you get the idea by now, don't you?)
Using a META TAG to
make the page change automatically :
You can make a page go on to another URL without being clicked on. You can even control the time it waits before changing to the new page. You would use the following code between the <HEAD> and </HEAD> tag right before the <TITLE>.
<META HTTP-EQUIV="refresh"
CONTENT="20";URL="http://www........">
Substitute the number in the CONTENT= for the number that denotes the number of seconds before this page change is to take place (setting the CONTENT to 0 will make it happen immediately)
Substitute URL= for the URL of the page you want to change to.
Notice the semi-colon between CONTENT= and URL= (both the time number and the URL are part of the CONTENTS)
If you decide to use this function, keep in mind that text-only browsers do not support this tag and so you should provide another regular link for them to use.
more advanced extras
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