Today is HTML Day 2025!
Posted on August 2, 2025 by Aywren
I will be honest – I didn’t know there was an annual day that celebrated HTML until this year. I noticed the link to the official celebration website on the header of Neocities, and had to click it out of curiosity. That led me to a list of IRL and online meet-ups that are all dedicated to celebrating HTML.
HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) is the coding language that is the foundation of content the Web since before I knew what the Internet was. This language is fairly straightforward to learn and use, and was something I taught myself as soon as I realized I could create visual pages online for others to visit.
I believe that my introduction to HTML was through a profile page you could code for the old chat community I frequented back in the late 1990’s. I noticed that clicking other people’s avatar opened a page that told all about their RP character, and I wanted to learn how to make one for my own. So, my quest to learn HTML began.
That led me to coding larger websites, once hosted on Geocities, for my fandom interests and to eventually running my own online communities. This would extend to chat rooms, email lists, forums, and okeaki boards. Basically, I’ve dabbled in it all, back during a time when you actually had visitors that came to your site and used fan-run forums.
What I didn’t know was that the skillset I developed in those days – writing code, deciphering code, understanding code tags, tweaking code – all would eventually become skills I use in my current everyday professional job. I may not be coding HTML websites, but I do work consistently in an XML environment. This is similar enough to HTML that my knowledge transferred over and my coding abilities are in use on a daily basis.
So, something I learned nearly 20 years ago from dabbling on Geocities fan sites is still very relevant to me. Just as relevant as it is here on this site, which is also coded in HTML, rather than hosted on a platform such as WordPress. In fact, I spend time celebrating HTML every day, especially this past year, as I’ve been slowly coding my way through projects for other sites that I host.
This was a bit of a ramble, but it’s meant to say that learning and practicing HTML – if you have an interest – is probably one of the easier and intuitive coding languages to pick up. Beyond just making your own personal website somewhere, working with a coding language provides skills that can be transferred beyond.
I’d highly recommend it. There’s something pleasing about fiddling around in code, getting something on your site to work, and seeing it out there on the Web where everyone else can view your creations as well.
I’ve got a lot of resources here under the Guides section of this site that can help you get started coding HTML. And there are places like Neocities and Nekoweb where you can practice building a free of your own.
So, get out there and code yourself a website! It might just change your life - like it has mine!