I Built a Website Boilerplate Using Only Terminal — Here's What I Learned

Hey everyone 👋

I recently started a developer tools course that uses real tools like Linux terminal, Gitpod, PostgreSQL, Git, and more.
At first, I thought they would teach me everything step-by-step, but they didn’t 😅

They just gave me a project and said:

“Here, build a website boilerplate — using only the command line.”
And I thought... okay then, let’s figure this out.

This is part of the freeCodeCamp Relational Database Certification course, where instead of lectures, you learn by doing — directly in a virtual Linux environment.

🚀 The Setup

The project ran on Gitpod (online VS Code + Linux environment).
First step was logging into GitHub, opening Gitpod, and starting the course using the CodeRoad extension.

No GUI, no drag-drop, just terminal.

🛠️ What I Actually Learned — For Real

✅ Terminal Navigation Basics

• ls → list files in current folder

• pwd → print current working directory

• cd foldername → go into a folder

• cd .. → go back one folder

• cd ../.. → go back two folders

Now I finally get what .. and . (in same folder) mean in real use.

✅ File + Folder Management

• touch filename → create a file
  touch roboto-bold.woff

• mkdir foldername → create a folder
  mkdir client/assets/icons

• mv source target → move/rename files or folders
  mv header.png ..
mv footer.jpeg client/assets/images/
mv CodeAlly.svg client/assets/icons/

• cp source target → copy files
  cp -r boilerplate toms-website → copied entire folder

• rm filename → delete file
  rm temp.txt
  (careful with this one)

---

✅ Hidden Files

• ls -a → shows hidden files like .gitignore, .DS_Store, etc.

---

✅ Adding Content to Files

• echo "some text" >> filename
  Example:

    echo I made this boilerplate >> README.md
  

This was useful to update the README.md without even opening it.

---

✅ Searching Files & Folders

Honestly, this was 🔥. The find command saved me.

• find . -name "index.html"

• find . -name "*.ttf"

• find . -type d -name "images"

• find client/assets/fonts -name "lato-bold.ttf"

Even found hidden files like .gitignore with:

ls -a

---

✅ Understanding Paths

At first, I messed up mv(move) and cp(copy) a lot. Then realized:

• . means current folder

• .. means parent folder

• ../.. is one more level up

Now I finally understand what’s happening in a path like:

mv images/footer.jpeg client/assets/images/

---

✅ Folder Tree with find

To view the whole folder structure, I used:

find toms-website

This acted like a folder tree. Super helpful.

---

🔚 End of Task 1

By the end, I had created:

• A full boilerplate folder

• Fonts folder with .woff and .ttf files

• Moved assets like CodeAlly.svg, header.png, footer.jpeg

• Appended stuff to my README.md

• Copied the whole project into a new folder toms-website

---

🧠 What This Taught Me

It’s one thing to “know” commands from tutorials — it’s another to actually use them in a real dev project.
Now these commands feel natural, not just memorized.

I finally feel like I’m using the terminal the way real developers do.

---

🤝 Let's Connect

If you're learning this kind of stuff too, or if you’re scared of the terminal — trust me, just start using it. You’ll mess up a few commands, but that’s where the real learning happens.

Let’s learn together.
More posts coming soon 💻