The Basics of Web Coding

Web coding is the process of creating websites and web applications. It involves using coding languages like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to turn designs and ideas into the interactive and user-friendly web pages we all know and love. It’s a crucial part of technology—without it, there wouldn’t be websites or apps. Web coding is also an important skill for anyone transitioning into a tech career. You’ll hear job titles like “front end developer,” “back end developer,” and even “full stack developer”—all with varying levels of clarity as to what they actually mean.

A website is a collection of files that are hosted on servers, which are computers connected to a giant network called the Internet. These servers are responsible for hosting all the websites we visit on a daily basis, and they’re what makes it possible to view websites from anywhere in the world.

The first step in building a website is to create an HTML file. This can be done by opening a text editor (like Microsoft Word or Notepad) and entering in the basic code for the page. It’s important to use a text editor instead of a word processor, as word processing programs insert characters that aren’t valid HTML.

For the rest of the document, you’ll want to add the html> tag in the beginning of the file, and then start adding the different elements that make up a web page. This includes the head> tag, which is used to include information about the coding style, and the title> tag, which provides a name for the page. Next comes the body> tag, which contains all of the content for the web page. Finally, the img> tag is used to include any images on the page.

As you add these tags, you’ll need to be sure to follow the proper naming conventions for your file names. This is so that the browser knows where to find each piece of data. For example, you’ll want to avoid any percent signs, slashes, question marks, exclamation points, or commas in your file names. These characters interfere with the way the file is read and can cause errors in the site.

While learning to code may seem intimidating at first, it’s actually pretty simple—especially when you break the process down into smaller pieces. The first step is to create a document in a text editor, and then add the html> tag in the first line of the document. You’ll also want to ensure the file has a.html extension so that it’s readable in any web browser.

Once you have your document set up, it’s time to add the basic code for your web page. For example, to add a header, you’ll want to type in the h1> tag, and then for each paragraph, you’ll want to enter in the p> tag. If you want to add an image, you’ll need to add the img src=””> tag and the URL of the image.