This is a sample basic Node.js website using plain HTML files and the built in http and fs modules.

This tutorial will walk you through the creation of a very basic website using only Node.js built in modules. Follow these steps to create a Node.js website:

1. Create a folder for your Node.js project.
2. Create a home page HTML and call it index.html. Add the required HTML tags and some basic content in the index.html file.
3. Create a second file and for now, call it another-page.html. Add the required HTML tags and some basic content in the another-page.html file.
4. Add a link in the index.html page to another-page.html. And add a link in the another-page.html to index.html. This will allow for easy testing of pages.
5. Create a new file called app.js.
6. In app.js import the required modules:

var http = require('http'); var url = require('url'); var fs = require('fs');

7. Create an http server:

http.createServer(function (req, res) { }).listen(8080);

This will start a web server. The server is available to test by opening a browser and using the URL http://localhost:8080/index.html.

8. Inside the createServer function add code to fetch the current URL:

var q = url.parse(req.url, true); var filename = "." + q.pathname;

9. Inside the createServer function, after the the previous lines of code, add code to load the appropriate HTML file based on the URL. For example the URL http://localhost:8080/index.html will load the index.html file.

fs.readFile(filename, function(err, data) { res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/html'}); res.write(data); return res.end(); });

10. Inside the readFile function, add code that will display an error message in case the requested URL does not match an exsting file:

if (err) { res.writeHead(404, {'Content-Type': 'text/html'}); return res.end("404 Not Found"); } 

11. To test your Node.js website, open up a terminal, use cd to navigate to your project folder, and use node app.js to start your file. Then open a browser and visit the URL http://localhost:8080/index.html.

Your final code in app.js should look like this:

var http = require('http'); var url = require('url'); var fs = require('fs'); http.createServer(function (req, res) { var q = url.parse(req.url, true); var filename = "." + q.pathname; fs.readFile(filename, function(err, data) { if (err) { res.writeHead(404, {'Content-Type': 'text/html'}); return res.end("404 Not Found"); } res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/html'}); res.write(data); return res.end(); }); }).listen(8080);

• Visual Studio Code or Brackets (or any code editor)
• Filezilla (or any FTP program)
• Node.js

Full tutorial URL: https://codeadam.ca/learning/nodejs/nodejs-website.html