How To: Make Your Website Look Like A Linux Terminal


Have you seen my personal site JeffWeisbein.com yet?  No?  Go ahead, check it out.  I’ll give you a minute or so.  Alright, you’re back now.  So now you are probably wondering how you can create a website similar to that one.  Luckily, it’s fairly easy. All you need to do is copy the source code on JeffWeisbein.com, copy a text file, make a few minor modifications to both the source code and the text file, and then upload the documents to your web server.

But first, how do you view the source code?  Depending upon your web browser it may vary slightly, but typically you can right click the page and choose “View source code” or something to that effect.  It will open a new window with the source code in it.  Simply copy all of the code, open your favorite HTML editor, and paste the code inside.  From there, you can make whatever modifications you want.  For example, you can (and probably will want to) change the title of the document from Jeff Weisbein to your own name (e.g. John Doe).  You can also change the colors used on the page by modifying the styling/CSS.

In addition to those changes, you will want to scroll down in the source code to approximately line 161, where you will change the following line of code:

Typer.file="jeffweisbein.txt"; to Typer.file="yourname.txt";.

Of course, you would replace “yourname” with your actual name.  After you have done that, save the file as a .html (HTML) file.

And now, the last step.  Go back to your web browser and visit, http://www.jeffweisbein.com/jeffweisbein.txt. Once you’re there, copy the contents of the text file and paste them into your own text file on your computer. Again, you’ll want to edit the contents to fit your needs, however, be sure to leave all of the paragraph brackets as well as all of the comments within the text file. They are necessary for the site to function properly.  After you have made your changes, save the document as yourname.txt (again, replacing “yourname” with your actual name).  I should also note that you must save it as a text file (.txt extension) for it to work properly.

If you have any questions, comments, or problems feel free to leave a comment and I’ll do my best to help out.

Lastly, I’d like to thank my friend Sam Phippen for letting me share his awesome website idea and coding skills with everyone.