Creating Websites

So you want to create a website? Great! This guide will show you how to get started.

The way dawdle.space works it that any thing you put in your public folder will be accessible from the internet. Upload your files there and they will be available at https://your-username.dawdle.space/filename.

If you don’t want to do any coding, there are a few tools that can help you create a website:

• typora
  A very powerful and still easy to use Markdown editor with a bunch of themes
• Publii
  A desktop app that lets you create a website without coding

Markdown

Dawdle.space supports Markdown, a simple markup language that lets you write formatted text. You can use it to create headings, lists, links, and more. Following is a simple example. The text between the --- is called front matter, and it’s used to set metadata for the page.

index.md:

---
title: My First Post
---

# Hello World!

This is my first post. Here's a list:

- Item 1
- Item 2

HTML, CSS, and JavaScript

You might have already noticed the index.html file in your public folder. This is the default page that will be shown when you visit your site. We’ve already created a simple website for you, but you can change it however you want.

HTML is the language used to create websites. It’s a markup language, which means you use tags to create elements. For example, <h1>Hello World!</h1> will create a big heading. Here are some simple things you can try out:

• <h1>Hello World!</h1> will create a big heading
• <a href="https://example.com">Link</a> will create a link to https://example.com
• <br> will create a line break
• <p>Some text</p> will create a paragraph
• <img src="https://example.com/image.png"> will create an image

Static Site Generators

If you want to create a more complex website than just a few HTML files, like a blog or a portfolio, you can use a static site generator like Zola. See Creating a Website with Zola for more information.

Other static site generators you can use are Hugo, or Astro (what this site is built with). These have varying levels of complexity, so you might want to try out a few to see which one you like best.

More Resources

To dive in deeper, we have a few resources for you:

• The Valley of Code
  A website that teaches you HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Has everything from absolute beginner tutorials to more advanced stuff. Reccommended by us for anyone who wants to learn web development.
• VS Code
  If you feel limited by the editor on here, you can download VS Code and edit your files locally. The editor on here is based on VS Code, so it should feel familiar.
• Getting started with the Web
  A tutorial by Mozilla that teaches you the basics of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
• HTML Dog
  Also has tutorials for HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and a nice list of examples you can copy to your site
• A Beginner’s Guide to Using Dev Tools
  A video by Google that teaches you how to use the developer tools in your browser - very useful for checking out how other websites are built