Cannot Find My Website's Code to Edit! Options

[Lucas65]

My website is public, I am completing a rapid survey of W3C's edex.org clas "Introduction to HTML5 and CSS," I have spent much time examining menu items at the backend of my website at wordpress.org YET, to my shock (no exaggeration), I don't have a clue how I can find the complete and editable source code of my website. So without this, everything I have learned is useless. Although I have not quite finished my W3C class I am non-plussed that no lesson ever explained how to access a website and edit it. All exercises are experiments at codepen.io, for example.

The wp.org website even given that it is open-source and not proprietary like wordpress.com, offers merely a GUI window in which I can add HTML or CSS code but, without context, this is useles.

I am being wordy. Question recap: How do I access the complete source code of my website in a version that is editable?

[pandy]

I'm not sure I follow. wordpress.com offers WordPress for download, right? So I assume you have installed the software on your own server.

Any software like that, forums, blogs and so on, consists of a lot of template files that generate the actual web page. You can do a View Source at one of your pages and see the complete HTML, CSS and JS as the browser gets it, but there will be no such file on the server since the page is generated on the fly and there is no hard copy of it.

When you want to change something, say the design of your page head, you need to find the template that contains that bit. It will be a mix of HTML and PHP code and you have to be careful not to change the PHP as that will break you site.

I haven't used WP myself, but there ought to be some documentation to help you get around.

[Lucas65]

I'm not sure I follow. wordpress.com offers WordPress for download, right? So I assume you have installed the software on your own server.

Any software like that, forums, blogs and so on, consists of a lot of template files that generates the actual web page. You can do a View Source at one of your pages and see the complete HTML, CSS and JS as the browser gets it, but there will be no such file on the server since the page is generated on the fly and there is no hard copy of it.

When you want to change something, say the design of your page head, you need to find the template that contains that bit. It will be a mix of HTML and PHP code and you have to be careful not to change the PHP as that will break you site.

I haven't used WP myself, but there ought to be some documentation to help you get around.

I am at wordpress.org not wordpress.com I am completely confused. At the backend of my website the only changes I can make to my output (website) are simple ones using GUI tools. But my website is not close to functioning or being the way I want it to be and there are no more changes I can make from the backend. Is there no way that I can see all my code as in Inspect and edit it? I am missing the big picture, my website is stuck where it is and I don't know how to proceed. It seems that the coding for different elements that I have learned in my HTML class are useless because I have no understanding of how I apply them in a granular way to my website.

[pandy]

I am at wordpress.org not wordpress.com I am completely confused. At the backend of my website the only changes I can make to my output (website) are simple ones using GUI tools. But my website is not close to functioning or being the way I want it to be and there are no more changes I can make from the backend. Is there no way that I can see all my code as in Inspect and edit it? I am missing the big picture, my website is stuck where it is and I don't know how to proceed. It seems that the coding for different elements that I have learned in my HTML class are useless because I have no understanding of how I apply them in a granular way to my website.

Yeah, sorry. I got that. .com was a typo. Anyway, wordpress.ORG offers the software for download. So, you must have installed it at a server, a web host.

It sounds like you access your stuff through some web interface. Is that something your host offers or does it come with WordPress? And what is this Inspect as you talk about? A browser feature or a feature of the online editor you use?

What I said still goes. You can't see and edit a normal HTML page whatever way you use. You must edit the individual templates. That means you have to deal with PHP. WordPress may offer easy access to some stuff though some kind of control panel you access with your browser, like maybe making changes to the heading. But I don't know if that is the case and even if it is you would only be able to change some things this way.

View Source at the very page we are on now here at the forum. You will see normal HTML. A lot of it. That page doesn't exist on the server as a file. It's generated each time it's requested by you, me, Christian or anyone else. It generated by a system of PHP templates and sent to the browser as a stream, similar to how your blog works.

I agree with Christian. If this mainly is a learning experience for you, stick with static pages for a while and wait a little with installing server side stuff.