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WordPress is easy to use for everyone, whether you are a beginner or a skilled Support Team member. You can create an interactive website without technical experience using WordPress and other supported languages. Once you’re familiar with this platform, integrating basic HTML into your WordPress is an excellent way to keep your site under control. Let’s unravel where and how HTML is used in WordPress.
HTML – HyperText Markup Language is a fundamental building block on which every WordPress site can rely. With basic knowledge of HTML, developers can create different ways a page can display content elements. Additionally, HTML is relatively easy to learn and use even if you have never written a code. Simply put, HTML is the language web pages are created in, using functions, syntax routines, and programmable elements.
It is a beginner-friendly language for performing basic coding to make a proper format of how your website will look. In this article, we will examine the primary concepts of HTML, including what HTML is, how it works, why HTML is used in WordPress, and many other details about the subject.
After thoroughly reading this information, you can easily understand why you should use HTML or an HTML page in WordPress. So, let’s begin with the article and learn more about HTML.
What is HTML?
Whether you work in web design or development, you might have heard about HTML during your schooling or college days. HTML or Hypertext Markup Language is the language of the Internet. Using HTML, web developers create web pages.
HTML is a markup language, not a programming language like Python or JavaScript. These tools help users develop programs in minor to complex forms.
The impact may affect the on-page content elements, like images and text necessary to add to your website. HTML notes this content by giving proper instructions about how each text and image displays on the website. Because of this reason, HTML is easier and quicker to understand.
WordPress is not written in HTML but in PHP – the programming language that helps control how the WordPress site can interact and connect with the database.
When the user searches for anything on your WordPress page or webpage, the PHP code receives that request and fetches the relevant content from the WordPress database. It converts the response into an HTML file + CSS file and sends it back to the user who requested it.
Now, let’s look at the relationship between HTML and WordPress sites.
Relation of WordPress and HTML
Easy Customization
WordPress (WP) lets users customize the functionality and look of their websites by selecting pre-existing themes or creating new templates and themes.
These templates or themes generally contain HTML, CSS, and sometimes JavaScript. Developers can add customized HTML and CSS code to personalize their WordPress websites, and skilled users who want to make specific designs for their website’s layout can use such features. In a custom-built WordPress theme, developers can alter how HTML is used. Similarly, a WordPress theme allows developers to add custom CSS, HTML, and JavaScript codes to make necessary changes.
WordPress generates HTML
WordPress supports creating pages, posts, templates, and other content formats. Why? When content creation starts, the back-end WordPress page builder generates the required HTML code to display a page’s content.
WordPress uses different themes and templates to understand how content is made and styled in HTML code. Using custom scripts, HTML, PHP scripts, JavaScript, and CSS code snippets, WordPress creates the final output according to a theme’s native design.
Easy Integration
HTML is easy to embed in the WordPress content. Developers can use HTML tags to embed videos, format text, create links, and place these things into WordPress’s visual editor.
A developer must change the WordPress core files to create HTML output. Similarly, the Theme File Editor page lets users adjust the WordPress file codes. Once you’re finished, you can see if the HTML used makes a difference in WordPress. You can use HTML and WordPress to achieve the required output.
Similarly, JavaScript can also help users strengthen the WordPress website’s interactivity.
WordPress HTML Forms
WordPress websites often have forms—such as search and contact forms—that interact with users’ inputs. HTML helps create such Forms, which show the architecture and form fields. HTML forms are easier to handle and require no special maneuvers. You can also code a separate web page using HTML that contains the required forms to capture visitors’ email addresses. This process is also called lead capturing.
Plugins can also help users add WordPress Forms to pages and posts. However, this is only possible with an understanding of HTML form attributes and elements, which helps with smooth customization and easy tuning.
Theme Development
Website developers who can make WordPress themes possess good knowledge of CSS and HTML. WordPress themes are collections of CSS, PHP code, and HTML templates. These three entities work together to render a website’s content and design.
In this case, here are the two use cases of HTML used in WordPress.
- Developers can code static pages as a WordPress theme. In this case, simple HTML can play the required role.
- Developers can also code dynamic templates using HTML, PHP files, and 3rd party codes.
PHP is also a language that is closely associated with WordPress, as it provides server-side scripting for generating dynamic information.
HTML-based Email Templates
Using the WordPress platform, HTML is used to structure email content when sending emails—such as newsletter notifications. Users can personalize such email templates by updating the HTML code.
Custom Page Templates
Users can create custom page templates or WordPress posts. These templates are HTML files with particular PHP code. By modifying the CSS and HTML code of the page templates you are working on, you can create unique layouts for each web page.
By custom templates, we mean achieving the required page layout for a page. This also implies custom templates for a specific page layout, such as pages or posts in WordPress. Once a custom page template is created, all the native pages are designed and displayed in a specific layout – automatically according to the custom template.
Metadata and SEO
HTML plays a crucial role in performing on-page SEO. WordPress can quickly optimize site content according to search engine requirements. This becomes possible by adding headings, metadata, alt tags, structured data, and more using HTML elements.
Responsive Design
To develop a responsive website that helps users see content on various screen sizes and gadgets, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript make up the page layouts. Here, HTML and CSS help developers create WordPress themes.
Implanting External Content
WordPress framework allows you to use external content like maps, videos, or even social media posts in your posts and pages. It often uses shortcodes or HTML to define how this external content is displayed on web pages.
Security
Understanding HTML and its basics is necessary to maintain your website’s security. Experience in HTML can help you remove and avoid security errors and vulnerabilities while validating the input and encoding the output. HTML validation is vital in making web applications more secure, especially in forms.
The validation can also help web owners prevent XSS attacks and will fix XSS vulnerabilities if the form accepts and executes users’ inputs. Similarly, especially in static HTML web pages, the integration of dynamic HTML helps even more for various purposes, such as database data retrieval.
HTML Blocks and Widgets
In the latest version of WordPress, you can make custom blocks and widgets for your website. These blocks and devices are developed using HTML, JavaScript, and CSS to define their functionality and appearance.
Theme Customization
When customizing any WordPress theme, you have to change the HTML structures. This process involves rearranging elements – altering the layout, and adding new sections.
Where and how is HTML used in WordPress?
HTML can manipulate the format of any template or theme and control how specific parts of the content function. For instance, one joint action is to add a ‘nofollow’ tag to your links.
To add a nofollow tag, you must write the below-given line of code manually.
<a href=”abc.com”>decided anchor text</a>
While adding the nofollow tag, the above line becomes:
<a href=”abc.com” rel=”nofollow”>anchor text</a>
As soon as you become more experienced with HTML, you will see other areas where HTML will let you pass over the regular WordPress editor.
Now, let’s see how to add HTML to your WordPress site.
At this point, you are ready to see what adding HTML + WordPress looks like in practice. Here are some essential examples to help you understand how HTML works in WordPress.
For instance, if you are writing a blog post, the headings you place in the text address the use of HTML. Consider the source code when the page renders in a web browser. You can see HTML heading data in the source code.
Here – as you know, you can do the following thing in WordPress by picking one of the alternatives from the drop-down Heading menu:
But you can also do the same thing with HTML. In the Text tab of the text box, search for the text that requires a Heading format. Then, add heading tags in the start and end like this:
Here, the <h1> and </h1> tags will help WordPress to turn the text into a <heading 1> format.
Related Reading: Guide to Understanding WordPress Internal Functions
WordPress uses HTML? (More Factors)
There are some primary tags for all uncommon and common formatting types you must apply to your text. For example, let’s say – you want to make a word italic, then you have to write the following tag into the sentence using the code editor:
Example sentence: HTML is the acronym of Hyper Text Markup Language.
Italics format to the word ‘acronym’:
HTML is the <i>acronym</i> of Hyper Text Markup Language.
In the same way, when you want to add emphasis to certain text:
HTML is the acronym of <em>Hyper Text Markup Language.</em>
Also, a <strong> and <b> tags are used to provide a bold and robust effect to the text to emphasize the text you want to highlight.
Additionally, you can also combine different HTML tags. For instance, if you want to add a lot more emphasis to the text and make it bold and italics, you can write the following line:
<strong><i>Sample Text</i></strong>
Ensure the tag inside the other HTML tags are not open. In the above line, the italics tag is inside the substantial tag; hence, it completes first, and the considerable label closes afterward.
These simple-to-understand examples can help you understand how HTML tags work in WordPress. You can also use one introductory tag that tells WordPress about HTML code snippets.
The closing tag of HTML tells about the end of an HTML document; thus, WordPress functions can begin to perform accordingly after the </html> identification. Most HTML tags are simple to use and understand, although they may have different formats.
Of course, you can use all these options in the Visual tab of the text box of the WordPress editor. However, adding HTML to WordPress helps you include easy formatting, like highlighting text by including <mark> text or creating tables using <table> tags.
When using HTML in your WordPress site, your customization alternatives are endless. You can also include specific formats in the widgets—using ways that make HTML possible in WordPress. Plenty of online tutorials help make the most of using HTML in WordPress.
Final Verdict
So, Where and How is HTML used in WordPress?
Ultimately, it is necessary to know that HTML will play an essential role in WordPress development. While it gives a user-friendly interface for easy content management, HTML is the backbone of each WordPress webpage.
Learning HTML is essential for making and customizing templates and themes, creating specifically unique layouts, and ensuring that each provides optimal performance. Custom HTML also empowers users to troubleshoot issues, improve user experience, and improve your website’s SEO.
Even for people who primarily depend on WordPress plugins and visual editors, primary knowledge of HTML can be enormously beneficial. It helps users tune their WordPress site positively, use design elements, edit headers and widgets, and correct any anomalies in the area.
In this rapidly changing digital era, where user engagement and search engine rankings are crucial, HTML is mandatory for a site’s success, formatting routines, and design.
If you are a skilled Support Team member or a blogger, learning how primary HTML works in WordPress is a robust asset you can own while working with WordPress development. It minimizes the gap between design aspirations and the execution of technical management. HTML also unlocks the potential of popular CMS and allows the change of WordPress minors, which otherwise require coding expertise.
For WordPress maintenance and support regarding HTML errors in WordPress or custom templates, please let us know so we can fix your site’s problems.
