edit- (bad copy/paste bad sorry)

I am making an HTML page that I plan to use as a bulletin on myspace (god I know I will get flamed for that...sorry) But I want the bulletin to have a viral effect. My idea was to write a small bulletin with an image promoting my site, and then a TEXTAREA box at the bottom with the HTML code to re post the exact same bulletin with a TEXTAREA box of its own.

The problem I am having is that I can't get the closing TEXTAREA tag into the actual text of the text box. I need to have the closing tag inside my text area box as just text, not as an HTML code. Here is what I have so far so that you guys kind visualize the code...I am sure it is a bit confusing.

 <p align="center">Promo text with images and what not... 
<b>Please, please re-post this bulletin with the following code!</b><br> 
<br> 
copy and paste into new bulletin...<br> 
<TEXTAREA NAME="1" COLS="40" ROWS="20> 
<p align="center">Promo text with images and what not... 
<br> 
copy and paste into new bulletin...<br> 
<TEXTAREA ID="2" COLS="40" ROWS="20"><br> 
<p align="center">Promo text with images and what not... 
<b>Please, please re-post this bulletin with the following code!</b><br> 
<br> 
copy and paste into new bulletin...<br> 
<TEXTAREA ID="3" COLS="40" ROWS="20"><br> 
<p align="center">Promo text with images and what not... 
<b>Please, please re-post this bulletin with the following code!</b><br> 
<br> 
copy and paste into new bulletin...</TEXTAREA ID="3"> 
 
</TEXTAREA ID="2"> 
</TEXTAREA ID="First">

On top of the problem with the ending textarea tag being used instead of inside the text box, I feel like my logic is flawwed, I just can't pin where. I need to have the one text box on the main bulletin, and then two more within the text of the TEXTAREA box...right? I am getting myself so wrapped around in circles here.

You can't use HTML tags within the TEXTAREA, you must convert them to their HTML entities. Use &lt; and &gt; for the < > characters inside your textarea. That way you aren't creating additional HTML elements.

You'll possibly want to disable the textarea so that no mishaps will happen with copying the content.

Another thing is Names or IDs can not start with or be numbers and IDs must be unique. So place letters infront of them. Closing tags can not have attributes either unless it's an empty element like br, hr, link, meta, etc.

Cheers,

MC

Thank you so much for the tip, that should work perfectly! I really appreciate it!