Looking to get into web development but not sure where to put your site?

Just to put this out there, this article is 100% biased toward our offerings!

Many beginners decide to start a local web server on their computer; this can present a few challenges we won't discuss here. These challenges can feel quite overwhelming for a beginner. The best suggestion I will make here is to skip this and look for free web hosting online.

A lot goes into web development, and you may only be looking at a small portion of it, but starting, you have a choice to make. Do you want to learn how to make a website look great? Or are you looking to learn how to make a website work great?

What's the difference?

To make a website look great, you'll need to learn a couple of different languages, such as HTML and CSS. HTML is the building block of your website, while CSS is the style. There are many tools online to help you learn each of these languages, most, you won't have to pay anything for! A quick favorite is W3Schools.com (not affiliated with WZC.dev).

Making a website work great will require you to learn a server-side programming language such as PHP and JavaScript to make your site more interactive. A server-side programming language such as PHP is used to power your website. You would use this for things such as contact forms, blog posts, or even allowing user-generated content. JavaScript is used for making your HTML building blocks a little more interactive. While nowadays CSS can cover many responsibilities of JavaScript, it still has its place. Javascript is used to manage elements on your page.

In this short article, we will not be covering the details of each language, but there is a lot more to learn about each, such as using JavaScript as your server-side programming language through Node.js.

As you look into these programming languages, you'll notice that each has its file types, such as .html, .css, .js, or .php. These file types are essential. Without any modification, file types such as .html can not support PHP. However, PHP files can support HTML. The reasoning is simple, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript are all client-side languages. These languages run on your user's browser while PHP runs on your server. Your browser views a file with the .php extension as capable of sending client-side languages, while your server views a .html file as incapable of running server-side languages.

Once you're familiar with what languages you'll need and what file types these languages can be added to, it's time to start learning. As mentioned above, setting up your web server is not always an ideal solution. We suggest getting started with a free web hosting account.
Check out WZCFree.com for free web hosting.

With all there is to learn about web development, we will be releasing multiple articles on the subject over the coming time, it may look daunting at first, but it is a very rewarding skill and a great hobby!