Make the page

Open your file manager. That is the window of folders you click through.

Go to home. On Linux that folder is /home/you, with your login in place of you.

Do not drop the work on the Desktop. This course will look under home every time.

Inside home, make a folder called projects. Inside projects, make a folder called first-site.

Click into first-site so you can see it is empty. That empty folder is about to hold the page.

Open a text editor. Type this one line, and nothing else:

<h1>Ground Zero</h1>

Save the file as index.html inside first-site. You now have ~/projects/first-site/index.html.

On Linux that place is /home/you/projects/first-site/index.html.

Look back at the file manager. index.html should sit inside first-site, inside projects, inside home.

If you can see the file there, it has a place you can point at.

Double-click index.html. A browser opens. The page should say Ground Zero.

Now read the address bar. It should show file:///home/you/projects/first-site/index.html.

A file is a thing with a place. The browser wrote that place as a file:// URL.

A URL is an address the browser knows how to open. The file:// kind names a file on this computer.

It is not a page on the internet. That address works only on your machine.

Send it to a friend and they cannot open your file. Their computer does not have your copy.

The string in the bar is a path with a prefix. A path is the place of a file, written as folders separated by slashes.

On Linux yours is /home/you/projects/first-site/index.html. The words on the page are the content.

The bar is the place. You typed one. The browser named the other.

Home is not a program. It is a folder. Your files sit under it.

The Desktop is one folder among those. Easy to see. Easy to lose the path this course will ask for.

You got here by double-clicking. That is enough for this page.

The file lives on this computer, so this computer can open it. Leave both windows up.

Here is the nest you just built.

Look at the address bar again. After file://, the next pieces are home.

On Linux they read /home/you. That is how you find home: it is already in the bar.

The folders after your name should still read projects/first-site/index.html. If they do, you put the file in the right nest.

If the bar contains Desktop, you put it in the wrong folder. Move first-site under projects under home. Double-click again.

If the bar contains /mnt/c or a drive letter such as C:, you are on the Windows side. Move the project to /home/you/projects/first-site. Double-click again.

The Desktop is a pile that grows. Home is the folder that is yours.

Put the project in projects/first-site under home so you can find it next time. The rest of the course uses that exact folder.

On your machine

On a Mac, home is /Users/<you>, not /home/<you>. The address bar will start file:///Users/….

On Windows with WSL, home is /home/<you> on the Linux side. Put the project there, not under /mnt/c. /mnt/c is the Windows C: drive as Linux sees it. The Windows Desktop lives on that side, so it is the wrong place too.

If the prefix in the bar is /Users/… or /home/…, you are fine. The last folders must still be projects/first-site/index.html.

That bar is the measurement. Before you started, the file did not exist.

Now it exists, and the browser can name it. Close the tab. Double-click index.html once more.

Same words. Same address. The file stayed. Leave the tab open.

You should still see Ground Zero and the file:// address. The file manager still shows the same file.

Two writings of one place: a row in the file manager, and a file:// URL in the bar.

First-hour glossary

You have a file at ~/projects/first-site/index.html. It is open.

The address starts with file://. Next you will take that address apart, piece by piece.

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