Local development means building and testing a website on your own computer before putting it online.

You do not need an internet connection to create a basic HTML and CSS website. Other people will not be able to visit it until you upload the files to a hosting account.

Working locally is a fast and safe way to learn because you can change the code, view the result, and fix mistakes without affecting a public website.

Steps

  1. Create a new folder for the website. Give it a clear name, such as my-first-website.
  2. Open the folder in your text editor.
  3. Create the two base files: index.html for the HTML and style.css for the CSS.
  4. Add the base HTML to index.html and the base CSS to style.css.
  5. Save both files. Make sure they are inside the same project folder.
  6. Open index.html in a web browser. You can usually double-click the file or drag it into an open browser window.
  7. Return to the text editor, change the HTML or CSS, and save the file again.
  8. Refresh the browser page to see the updated website.

The address in the browser may begin with file://. This means the browser is opening the file directly from your computer rather than loading it from a public website.

This method is enough for the basic HTML and CSS lessons. More advanced website features may eventually require a local server, but you do not need one to begin.

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