Web Coding & Development All-in-One For Dummies, 2nd Edition

Introduction

When the web first came to the attention of the world’s non-geeks back in the mid-1990s, the vastness and variety of its treasures were a wonder to behold. However, it didn’t take long before a few courageous and intrepid souls dug a little deeper into this phenomenon and discovered something truly phenomenal: They could make web pages, too!

Why was that so amazing? Well, think back to (or, if you’re not old enough, imagine) those old days and consider, in particular, what it meant to create what we now call content. Consider television shows, radio programs, magazines, newspapers, books, and the other media of the time. The one thing they all had in common was that their creation was a decidedly uncommon thing. It required a team of professionals, a massive distribution system, and a lot of money. In short, it wasn’t something that your average Okie from Muskogee would have any hope of duplicating.

The web appeared to change all that because learning HTML was within the grasp of all of us who could feed ourselves, it had a built-in massive distribution system (the internet, natch), and it required little or no money. For the first time in history, content was democratized and was no longer defined as the sole province of governments and mega-corporations.

Then reality set in.

People soon realized that merely building a website wasn’t enough to attract “eyeballs,” as the marketers say. A site had to have interesting, useful, or fun content, or people would stay away ...