This week I'm learning all of the semantics of writing the actual code. The File Transfer Protocol upload that I had planned out doesn't seem to be working, as I get multiple errors between my code in a simple html file and the code on an actual webpage. This is okay, however, because I can continue to work on the project in a file on its own. So far, I'm working on the background image, different fonts, and images to add to the website. I want it to look fun, cool and professional, and like something that I can be proud of at the end of the day.
To get into specifics about what I've been working on, I'll start with some of the actual code. In HTML, there are lines of code in a different language that can actually be used to communicate with the web browser. There are tags around these lines of code that tell the computer what type of code it's actually reading. For example, if I were to make the title of my webpage "THE WEBSITE TRACKER", I simply type <h1>THE WEBSITE TRACKER</h1>. The '<h1>' tags denote a header, and are important because
h means "header" and
1 means "most important header." If I were to need some kind of sub-headers for the website, I would use any other header from values of h2 to h6, with h6 being the smallest header possible. Also, notice how the first bracket is simply <h1> whereas the second bracket is </h1>. The forward slash directly after the opening bracket denotes the closing tag, which tells the browser that the header has ended. Every time you close a tag in HTML, a closing forward slash is necessary. This explanation will give further insight into the other things that I've accomplished with the language so far, like adding background images with <body background = "image.jpg">.
Body tells the web browser in which part of the web page the image will be located, and
background tells the webpage that the image will cover the entire background. In other words, you'll be able to see whichever fraction of the background image your browser window is centered on, and your browser window will not be able to stretch far enough that it will go outside the scope of the image. The "image.jpg" is calling to a file that you've uploaded to the server, with image being the name of the file and .jpg being the file type.
Speaking of servers, I thought I'd explain that part too. In order to have a functional website, three things need to function properly: A working host, a domain name, actual files that you have to write on your own. The
host is the part that keeps the website online, and allows people to access it. Every website is hosted on a server, much like you're accessing the internet through WiFi . The domain is the actual name of the website, like
blogger.com or
google.com. Think about it as the address of the website, just like you have an address to your house. The files are the .html files or the .php files that I've talked about in my posts.
To make this clearer or more specific, I'll use blahblahblah.com/index.php as an example. The
domain is blahblahblah.com, which had to be purchased, and
hosting had to be purchased as well to keep the site online. Index.php is a file that was uploaded to the server, and it will look like a lot of lines of code in pretty colors if it's opened up. You can think about "the server" in the same exact way that you would think about your computer. The "home" directory of the server is a lot like your desktop in that you can drag files to and from that location. In very simple terms, the location (domain) is
blahblahblah.com, it's connected to the internet, and
blahblahblah.com/index.php leads you to the file that's stored there.
These are just a few of the things that I've done with webcode so far, and a bit of explanation of what I've actually learned about how a webpage works. There are plenty more intricate things that I've learned to do with the code, and also less or more complex ways of maintaining a website. Unfortunately, if I wanted to program the website myself, hosting costs money and so does a domain, so all I have available is the .html file that I've kept saved to my computer. I'll look for some
good free hosting options (hard to find) and see if I can make one of those work for these purposes.
Thanks for reading!
