Create your server
Until now, we've been dealing purely with code that runs on the client—a web browser.
But as we learned in an earlier module, the HTML, CSS and Javascript files are sent from a server.
In this module, we're going to take the prototypes we've been building in Codepen and turn them into the start of a real, working app. We're going to use a different platform, Codenvy, to do this.
What Codenvy does
Codenvy is going to be your server.
It's more complicated than Codepen, but also much more capable.
Unlike Codepen, which runs only in your browser, Codenvy is an interface that is connected up to a real server.
Because of this, we can write code we want the server to run, as well as the HTML, CSS and Javascript we've already written.
We will only use Codenvy from now on.
Create a workspace
We're going to create a workspace on Codenvy.
A workspace is Codenvy's term for a server. Your app will run on this server.
We're going to call the workspace my-workspace
. You can call it anything you want.
We're also going to choose a stack for our workspace. This is a collection of pre-installed software that will help us build an app quicky.
Unless told otherwise, the default options Codenvy suggests will work for us.
To-do
- Go to Codenvy and create an account
- Click 'Create workspace' in the left sidebar
- From the 'Select stack' section, choose the 'Node - Default Node Stack with Node 7' option
- Hit 'Create'
Part of Web servers
- Create your serverP
- Create your appP
- Node and the terminalP
- More about the terminalP
- Web frameworksP
- Using ExpressP
- Serving static files
- Views and templates
- Routing
- Real data
- Includes
- Get confident with Express
- Build your app in ExpressP