just make a damned website already
back home
most people, when faced with tasks they see as vaguely technical, will dismiss it with an "i don't know where to start".
luckily for you, you've just found where to start.
we start off with a "pound" sign & the text. if you look over to the side, you'll see it's bigger and in bold. this is called a header, and there's 6 different "levels". the more pound signs you add, the smaller the header gets. next we've got (cut down to save space):
the important bit here is the section with square and regular brackets. this is actually how you create links! it looks confusing, but it can be broken down as:
for example:
would show up as ferox's website. next up we find:
this has another header, but smaller this time (sometimes called a subheader or h2). right below that is a list:
this does what you'd expect: creates an unordered ("bullet") list. doing "1. ", "2. ", and so on creates a numbered list. finally, there's text decoration. html.earth only has bold in the example page, so i'll just show you all of it here:
finally, if you've been trying yourself, you might have noticed that the spacing between lines isn't working quite how you'd expect. markdown only processes an empty line as an actual gap (or two spaces at the end of a line), like so:
luckily for you, you've just found where to start.
first off, we need somewhere to put the site
the place where the website actually exists is called a host. some people run it on their own computers, but to keep things easy, we'll go with a free online host. there are tons out there, but my personal favorite is neocities. go ahead and make an account. when you follow the instructions, they'll drop you right where you'll be putting the files to your website.next, we need some files to actually exist as the website
the most basic form of website is an .html file. you may already have one called "index.html", but if not, create it - this is the file browsers load when they first visit your site. for actually generating the contents, we'll use a neat tool called html.earth, which converts a more "friendly" format called Markdown into the files the web browser expects.a brief Markdown lesson
Markdown is pretty easy to get started with. all you've got to do is write what you want contained in your website, and add a handful of symbols to change how that text shows up. you'll notice that the html.earth default page has Markdown and the generated site side-by-side, so let's take a look:# html.earth
we start off with a "pound" sign & the text. if you look over to the side, you'll see it's bigger and in bold. this is called a header, and there's 6 different "levels". the more pound signs you add, the smaller the header gets. next we've got (cut down to save space):
...converts [Markdown input](https://go.mgx.me/mdcheatsheet)...
the important bit here is the section with square and regular brackets. this is actually how you create links! it looks confusing, but it can be broken down as:
[Text you want shown](Link to go to when clicked)
for example:
[ferox's website](https://saberonthe.net)
would show up as ferox's website. next up we find:
## Bare minimum features
this has another header, but smaller this time (sometimes called a subheader or h2). right below that is a list:
- markdown editor & live preview - HTML preview - front-matter editor - export to .html or .md - import .html or .md while retaining the metadata - word-counter - quick share
this does what you'd expect: creates an unordered ("bullet") list. doing "1. ", "2. ", and so on creates a numbered list. finally, there's text decoration. html.earth only has bold in the example page, so i'll just show you all of it here:
*italic text* **bold text** ***bold and italic text*** ~~strikethrough~~
finally, if you've been trying yourself, you might have noticed that the spacing between lines isn't working quite how you'd expect. markdown only processes an empty line as an actual gap (or two spaces at the end of a line), like so:
these would be shown as one line
these would be shown as two different lines
going further
congrats! you've just put together a basic webpage. export as a .html file in html.earth and upload it to your neocities page. there's some fun stuff you can do from here:- create more pages and link them together (hint: in most cases, just typing the filename as the link URL will work)
- become a neocities supporter and attach a custom domain (i recommend getting one from porkbun)
- take a look at the generated .html code and see what you can do to tweak it. there's a lot of great tutorials online if you get stuck!
- explore more site generators if you don't quite like how html.earth sites look
- get your site listed on the 250kb club, 512kb club, or 1mb club to help people surfing the web find your site! these are all gated to specific sizes of website, but there's a good chance yours will be within those constraints.
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