What is in a Webpage File?

As we talked about before, a website is made of webpages which are each each made from multiple files, but what are these files and how do you make your own?

The files of a website allow any computer to read and present the content, the text and the images, to a user in the same way. So that the computer can correctly read each file and understand what it means, it must be written in a way that the computer can understand. Exactly as books are written for people to read and anyone can read them, so long as they speak the language.

The language that the computer understands is generally called computer code. There are loads of types of computer code, each called a coding language or a programming language, just as there are many human languages.

Code, Like Cat Food, Comes In Many Different Flavours

The great thing about computer code is that every computer understands it in the same way. This is important because it means every computer will show your website just the way you intended.

Other files are used to make up a website, like video files or image files for photos, but you don't have to code them. Computers will understand those the same way too.

While it is only very clever people who can understand more than 1 human language, even the most basic computer will understand many programming languages. Each language has different uses or certain advantages but we are going to focus on the ones you need to build a website.