Compose Treehouse Text
To add text type in the space below.
Begin paragraphs with <p> and end them with </p>

Composing Treehouse Text: How and Why
Chris didn't compose his whole treehouse while online. First he wrote the text for his treehouse in a word processing program (MS Word). Builders need to use HTML code, a special code used for making web pages, to compose their text. Chris made sure to use HTML paragraph tags <p> and </p> around his paragraphs. He typed in TOLIMG where he thought he would want to insert images. He waited to add some of the other HTML tags and links to other pages until he was online and using the treehouse editor form. When he felt he was ready he logged in and copied and pasted his work into the treehouse text field. Chris logged on and and edited his treehouse several times to get the look of his page right and make sure there were no errors before he was ready to submit it for publication.
The Basics: Chris used simple HTML to compose most of his page. He used
<p> to begin his paragraphs and </p> to end them. He used the tags
<strong> and </strong> around text he would like to make bold and
<em> and </em> around text that he would like to italicize. He mainly used the bold and italic tags to make titles within his page. Chris left some blank spaces in the text field so that he could see what he was doing, but he knew that these spaces would not show up in his treehouse page. Chris used the special ToL code for adding images, which requires that you type in TOLIMG and the image's ID number. Planning Ahead: Before Chris knew the ID number for the images he wanted to use, he simply wrote TOLIMG in his page where he knew he wanted to add an image. See the following section on adding images for more information.
Advanced HTML: Chris used the tag
<p class="center">TOLIMG6461</p> around his title image so that he could center the image. He also used something called "anchors" within his page so that he could jump people from one part of his page to another. You can see that in the first paragraph Chris has written "This page describes
<a href="#illustrates">illustrates</a> just a small sampling of diversity". If someone clicks on the word "illustrates" in Chris's treehouse they will get bumped to the part of Chris's page that shows the illustrations. The section of the page that the visitor is bumped to will have the following HTML anchor tag:
<a name="illustrates"></a>
Using anchors within the page is a useful way to help people navigate around your treehouse.
You can read more about how to use HTML in the All the HTML You Need page.
Add Images to Your Treehouse
Adding Images: How and Why
Creating and Uploading Images: To create his treehouse Chris uploaded a whole set of images to the ToL database. Chris is a PhD student in Entomology and he took the images of the ant specimens in the laboratory in which he works. Chris captured the images by placing the ant specimens under a dissecting microscope that was connected to a digital camera. Check out one of Chris's ant photo's image data entry forms.
Putting images in the page: To save time Chris kept a record of the image ID for each image as he uploaded it to the database. To actually add the images to his treehouse page he wrote the code TOLIMG plus the image ID in the text field in the place that he wanted the images to appear in his page.
Chris also could have searched the ToL database for images to use in his page. If Chris clicked the Find Images button he could have searched on a variety of categories to find his or someone else's images to use. Again, to insert the images into this page he would have to write the code TOL for images.