Web Platform Setup

Setup Guide for Windows users

Here are the steps in overview. Make sure you have a decent internet connection as a lot of downloading (mostly automated, thankfully!) is required.

  1. Install Git and Github Desktop
  2. Install Node.js
  3. Install Visual Studio Code
  4. Install packages
  5. Sign up for an account with Firebase

We’ll be using your computer’s command line for some of these tasks, so if you aren’t familiar with it, read more about the Windows command prompt. For these steps, you’ll only need to copy and paste snippets into your command line.

1. Install Git

  1. Download and install Git
  2. You will be asked about "Adjusting your PATH environment", and given three choices
  3. Select "Run Git from the Windows Command Prompt", and complete the installation
  4. Verify Git is installed by opening a command prompt and running git. If you get an error such as "Command not found", Git has not been installed properly.
  5. Next, visit Github Desktop to download and install the Github app.

2a. Install Node.js

Node.js allows you to run Javascript code separate from a browser. Node.js uses the same Javascript engine as Google Chrome, and has a huge library of “packages” available which make programming easier.

Visit the Node.js site to download the Windows 64-bit installer and run it.

Test that Node.js is running by opening a new command prompt, type node —-version and press ENTER. You should see the version number printed. Don't proceed unless this works.

2b. Install build tools

At an administrator command prompt or Powershell:

npm install --global --production windows-build-tools

This can take a while to run.

3. Install Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio Code is a text editor well suited for web development tasks. It’s also happens to be made with web technologies (HTML and Javascript) so its a great example of how far you can take the skills you learn.

4. Install packages

We’ll need to install a few packages for Node.js using npm, the Node Package Manager.

$ npm install -g live-server

The -g option installs packages globally. If there is a failure installing a package, you could try re-running the command. npm will skip over packages it has already installed.