Testing Instructions

Note: When opening HTML files directly from your file system, you may encounter CORS (Cross-Origin Resource Sharing) errors that prevent JavaScript from loading local JSON files. This is a security feature of web browsers.

Why You're Seeing This Page

If you tried to open the test-page.html or other HTML files directly in your browser, you might have noticed that:

How to Properly Test Your Website

Method 1: Use the Neocities Website

The simplest way to test your website is to upload it to Neocities and view it there:

  1. Push your changes to GitHub: git push
  2. This will automatically upload to Neocities via the pre-push hook
  3. Visit your site at coffeeandacookie.neocities.org

Method 2: Use a Local Web Server

For local testing, you can use a simple web server:

Using Python (if installed):

# Navigate to your website directory
cd /Users/leah.wilson-duff/Documents/GitHub/Prototypes/personal-dot-com

# Python 3
python -m http.server

# Python 2
python -m SimpleHTTPServer

Then visit http://localhost:8000 in your browser.

Using Node.js (if installed):

# Install a simple server (one-time setup)
npm install -g http-server

# Navigate to your website directory
cd /Users/leah.wilson-duff/Documents/GitHub/Prototypes/personal-dot-com

# Start the server
http-server

Then visit http://localhost:8080 in your browser.

Understanding the Issue

The issue occurs because modern browsers implement a security feature called the Same-Origin Policy, which restricts how documents or scripts loaded from one origin can interact with resources from another origin. When you open a file directly from your filesystem (using the file:// protocol), it's considered a different origin than other local files, even if they're in the same directory.

Using a web server (even a local one) solves this problem because all files are served from the same origin (e.g., http://localhost:8000).

Next Steps

Choose one of the methods above to properly test your website. Once you're using a proper web server, you'll be able to see all the features working correctly, including: