## HTML Basics So most pages on a tradition website returns at minimum a text document `index.html`. And inside that document is something that looks like this. ```html <html lang="en"> <head> <!-- Meta tags tell the browser information about the app or page--> <meta charset="UTF-8"> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0"> <title>Subject of your page or app</title> </head> <body> <!-- Your specific document information goes here --> </body> </html> ``` When the browser gets the HTML from the server it reads the opening and closing tags from the outer `<html></html>` then its children tags from top to bottom. ![[html_flow_light.gif]] The ==index== is a common name for the file in any folder that you want to load first. So when a web browser goes to `mydomain.com/folder1` the sever that is hosting that website looks inside the folder `folder1` and checks to see if there is a `index.html` in there, then depending on the server it will check for other index files too like `index.php`. You don't have to concern yourself will anything but ==index.html== for right now though. Just know that when you are naming files ==index== is a very common file name in the root of the folder. ### Folders & Files All software is made up of these basic things. And websites, mirror this very basic functionality that all people who have used a computer should be comfortable with.