What is Website?

Newbie Introduction to the Web

In general, a website is made up of, quite often, many web pages. Sometimes it is just one page. A web page is basically composed of texts and graphic images and on some websites, you see lots of videos as well.

A simple website can be developed using just one  language called HTML (HyperText Markup Language.) More frequently, the last so many years, a page is developed using a combination of HTML, Dynamic HTML - DHTML, eXtensible HTML - XHTML and Java Scripts (a bunch of code that your browser can understand. By the way, Java language is completely different than Java Scripts. There is no comparison whatsoever.)

What is this HTML I hear so much about?
HTML is the publishing language of the World Wide Web (WWW). The outcome of HTML program is a human readable file that contains references to other documents called hyperlinks, or just links. Selecting (clicking on) a hyperlink causes the computer to display the linked document.

So what's this World Wide Web (WWW)?
It is a distributed hypertext-based (mind you, hypertext-based) information system on the Internet, which provides users an easy way to access global information consisting of a mixture of text, graphics, sound files, and video clips. It is the graphical portion of the Internet. (wow)

In simpler terms, it is a system of Internet servers that support documents formatted in a script called HTML that supports links to other documents, as well as graphics, audio, and video files. Not all Internet servers are part of the World Wide Web.

In a layman's words, WWW is a collection of Web pages on the Internet. Several websites can reside on one computer, or a website can be split over several computers in different places. The computers involved are known as servers or hosts because they host or serve pages to users.

Homepage
The root page, index or default page of a website. That means you have to have an index page.

A web host
A company that rents out servers, space on servers, or just space for someone else's server for hosting a website, e.g., VodaHost. Go ahead. Check it out. Most hosting companies offer an array of other services, but providing Internet connectivity is a basic.

Browser
A web browser is the software program you use to access the World Wide Web, the graphical portion of the Internet. The software program resides on your computer and is used to view web pages that reside on web hosts or servers. Examples are; Internet Explorer, Netscape, Mozzilla, Firefox, and Opera.

URL
Uniform Resource Locator (URL) formerly known as Universal Resource Locator, is a technical, Web-related term used in two distinct meanings:

1. In popular usage and many technical documents, it is a synonym for Uniform Resource Identifier (URI);
2. Strictly, the idea of a uniform syntax for global identifiers of network-retrievable documents was the core idea of the World Wide Web. Technically, it has been defined as "URI" as a generic term. However, the term "URL" has gained widespread popularity, which has continued to this day.

So what's this Internet?
The Internet is a worldwide, publicly accessible network of interconnected computer networks that transmit data using the standard Internet.

One more time. It is a worldwide network of computers that allows the "sharing" or "networking" of information at remote sites from academic institutions, research institutes, private companies, government agencies, and individuals. That includes me and hopefully you.

In simpler terms, the Internet is a gigantic collection of millions of computers, all linked together on a computer network. The network allows all of the computers to communicate with one another.

A home computer may be linked to the Internet using a phone-line modem (Dial-Up), DSL or cable modem that talks to an Internet Service Provider (ISP).

A computer in a business or university will usually have a network interface card (NIC) that directly connects it to a local area network (LAN) inside the business. The business can then connect its LAN to an ISP using a high-speed phone line like a T1 line. A T1 line can handle approximately 1.5 million bits per second, while a normal phone line using a modem can typically handle 30,000 to 50,000 bits per second.

ISPs then connect to larger ISPs, and the largest ISPs maintain fiber-optic "backbones" for an entire nation or region. Backbones around the world are connected through fiber-optic lines, undersea cables or satellite links. In this way, every computer on the Internet is connected to every other computer on the Internet.

By the way WWW uses the Internet but the reverse is not true. Internet is independent of the WWW.

ISP - Internet Service Provider
Connects individuals or companies to the Net. Most larger ISP's also do web hosting. For a fee, an ISP will let you use the WWW; will let you go online.

A WWW Consortium (W3C) was formed to have some sanity to this vast network. Anything you want to do or develop on the Internet, just go there and see what's cooking. Once you get there, you can read about a variety of things, e.g., HTML and other stuff. And that's what it is for me - just other stuff.

Domain Names
Because most people have trouble remembering the strings of numbers that make up IP addresses, and because IP addresses sometimes need to change, all servers on the Internet also have human-readable names, called domain names. For example, www.mywebsiteworkout.com is a permanent, human-readable name. It is easier for most of us to remember www.mywebsiteworkout.com than it is to remember 74.86.128.21.

The name www.mywebsiteworkout.com actually has three parts:
1. The Host name ("www")
2. The Second-Level Domain name ("mywebsiteworkout") SLD
3. The Top-Level Domain name ("com") TLD

Domain names within the ".com" domain are managed by the registrar called VeriSign. VeriSign also manages ".net" domain names. Other registrars (like RegistryPro, NeuLevel and Public Interest Registry) manage the other domains (like .pro, .biz and .org). VeriSign creates the top-level domain names and guarantees that all names within a top-level domain are unique. VeriSign also maintains contact information for each site and runs the "whois" database.

Domain Name Server
A set of servers called domain name servers (DNS) maps the human-readable names to the IP addresses. These servers are simple databases that map names to IP addresses, and they are distributed all over the Internet. Most individual companies, ISPs and universities maintain small name servers to map host names to IP addresses. There are also Central Name Servers (CNS) that use data supplied by VeriSign to map domain names to IP addresses.