Source code and browsers
First, let's talk about the structure of a webpage.
When you browse the Internet, you can see a lot of different websites. Some have beautiful images and others have vivid, eyecatching colour schemes.
The fact is that all of these websites are made out of simple HTML and CSS, the languages used specifically to create webpages.
Try right-clicking on this page and clicking "View Page Source", or whatever is similar in your browser. You'll see a wall of incomprehensible text. This is actually the source code of the page—what makes it tick.
By loading this source into a browser, such as Google Chrome, Firefox or Edge, you can visit websites. They all have the same underlying structure.
Let's write our own source code!
Let's write our own HTML code, why don't we? It's not as tricky as you think, so don't be afraid. Despite the word "code", there is no complicated coding work! HTML is a markup system—if you use Discord, do you remember how if you add *asterisks* around your text, they show up in italics? The same structure applies with HTML.
Please open the Notepad app on your computer (or an equivalent, but make sure it is a plain-text program, not like Microsoft Word) and write the following. If you're feeling lazy, copy-pasting is fine too.
<html>
<head>
<title> Welcome to the world of websites! </title>
</head>
<body>
<p style="color: blue">
Hello, world!
</p>
</body>
</html>
Once you have this in your document, save the file as hello.php anywhere on your computer. When you open the file, a browser will open and display the following in blue text:
Hello, world!
(And an example, if you don't want to do it yourself.)
You'll also notice that, up in the tab bar, the title "Welcome to the world of websites!" is displayed. It might look plain in this basic form, but this is how websites work at the simplest level. Every website is published based on this markup.