WEB DEVELOPMENT

Text Editors

A good text editor should be simple to use and available on a variety of platforms

How to choose a text editor?

Recommended Text Editors:

Style

Developing our websites by making it more pleasing to the eye

4 ways to develop our website:

1. HTML & CSS

You start with HTML and write your content, stylise it with CSS to give a consistent look and feel.

• Advantages:
1. Simple and can be very basic
2. Fully in control, can design however you like
• Disadvantages:
1. Gets progressively more complicated with more pages
2. Difficult to maintain consistency
3. Difficult to get a consistent design look and feel
• Steps:
1. Make a simple HTML file with links to your pages.
2. Use a CSS file to format the layout
3. Example of a basic website


2. Borrow a design that works using HTML and CSS

We can find templates up for use or examples and modify it to fit our content and tweak how the website will look.

• Advantages:
1. Professional looking, just add the content in
2. Do not require much modification
• Disadvantages:
1. Need understanding of how the site is designed to modify content and look
2. Requires changes to maintain consistency
3. Need knowledge of HTML and CSS
• Steps:
1. Search online for a HTML/CSS template site of your preference
2. Copy the template to index.html (text editor) as the starting page
3. Populate and expand your website
4. How to use Jake Wright's template


3. Markdown (Pure Markdown)

Markdown is a light-weight Mark-Up editing language that is good for displaying information. It is ideal for making fast notes, while still maintaining the document very “text-like”. Most documentation sites offer a markdown hosting option.
Markdown text is first processed by a program (usually python/javascript) into HTML. The HTML is then hosted by the webserver. This process is usually transparent to the user.

• Advantages:
1. Very text-like, easy to make notes and add information
2. Can supplement/substitute with HTML if you need more control
3. Github allows direct editing on the server.
• Disadvantages:
1. Need a hosting service that serves markdown (alternative: MkDocs)
2. Need to learn Markdown
3. Website looks very “bare”, “no-frills”, even with themes.
• Steps:
1. Create a Markdown file using a text editor or a dedicated Markdown application. The file should have an .md or .markdown extension.
2. Open the Markdown file in a Markdown application (eg. Github).
3. Use the Markdown application to convert the Markdown file to an HTML document.
4. View the HTML file in a web browser or use the Markdown application to convert it to another file format, like PDF.


4. Jekyll Themed Sites (using Markdown)

Jekyll is a static site generator which converts Markdown together with other instructions to HTML which is then hosted by the server.

• Advantages:
1. Easy to edit, information is added using Markdown or HTML
2. Processing by Jekyll is transparent to the user
3. Very professional, can change themes
• Disadvantages:
1. Need to be hosted on github or a site which can execute Jekyll
2. Need to understand how each part of the site is created, like solving a puzzle
• Steps:
1. I suggest you go to the site below to have a better understanding
2. Setting up github pages with Jekyll
3. How to use web-pk for your website