HTMLLesson 1 of 3Placeholder lesson

What a web page really is

Peek behind any website and see the plain text file that the browser turns into a page.

Published September 16, 2026

In this lesson

Websites feel complicated, but every one of them starts as a text file. In this lesson we open one up, look at what is inside, and see how a browser turns that text into the page on your screen.

Try it yourself

Copy this, run it, then change one thing and run it again. That is how it sticks.

index.html

<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
  <head>
    <title>My first page</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <p>Hello, web!</p>
  </body>
</html>