Guide: Setting Up HTML/CSS/JS to Build Real Websites

About this Guide

I’m a developer and I’ve been tutoring new coders for years, I teamed up with some other people like me to make this guide to help beginners to start building their own websites on their own computers. Wanna know more about these guides (there are others), me, and why we made them? See here.

Making a Website

Before we start, we presume you already have a text editor set up and at least know about our getting started guide! Second, we also highly recommend that you take at least the first two lessons in the free HTML course and at least the first two lessons in the free CSS course before going forward. Though these aren’t necessary, you’ll be better off for it.

You don’t have to “install” JavaScript, HTML, or CSS, all you need are your text editor and a browser. We recommend Google Chrome.

How to Create a Website, a quick article for making local files for a site, is here.

The free make a website course is also very useful. Some of it won’t be new to you if you’ve taken the Codecademy HTML and CSS courses first, but that’s a good thing that we in fact recommend.

Linking two HTML pages is covered here.

Linking your HTML and CSS is something that trips up a lot of people. Take a few free exercises here and watch this video if you want to get a deeper understanding.

Linking your HTML and JS - take this short course. It’s Pro only right now but you can finish it in the free Pro trial if you need.

If after taking the make a website course you’re interested in using bootstrap on your own site, use this article to get a head start and with some advanced features here.

If you’re using Sass after taking the free Codecademy course, you can install it here.

Sharing Your Website

After taking make a website, take deploy a website for free too. Deploying to GitHub pages is a key part of this particular course, and it can be a bit tricky for beginners so read this and watch this for extra help.

At some point, you should learn Git and GitHub in more depth. You can find our guide for that here.

Not The End

Please reply to this thread with your own resources, advice, and feedback! We made this post a wiki so it can be updated and maintained by the community, we’re just starting them off. See our other guides here.

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A post was merged into an existing topic: Get your website together | Typing code on your computer

Hi! Sorry but one thing was not clear… To learn HTML I need a text editor, correct? Can I use MS Office Word or is Visual Studio (VS) a better choice? I understand VS is perfect for JavaScript but I intended to learn HTML first. Thanks in advance!

Well, im fairly new to programming myself, but from what i understand when referred to a text editor. people are talking about applications or programs that format code for you that then you can use to develop said program.

(I have heard that the free editors sublime text and vsCode should be great, i use vscode and i find it easy and nice to use.)

( I dont think you can use word to format a website correct me if im wrong? But i know for a fact you can use notepad(windows build in) you just have to save the program as (.)html then the file format will know that it is meant for web.)

and by using vscode or another program you get the assistance of having colored text so you can see when you are writing different statements, functions and so on. it makes it way easier to find errors in your code and its more visually appealing to look at.

hope that helps! and sorry if it makes no sense, as english is not my first language.

Have a nice day -N

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Hi Nojus, thanks so much for your reply!