For those of you who are "newbies" to this thing called the internet, I've decided to write some articles on the "basics" so that ANYONE can feel comfortable joining our GutZy Women Community. For those who already know the basics, please be patient. OR better yet...join in the learning process by adding YOUR special knowledge and comments!
So what exactly IS a website?
A website is a set of interconnected webpages, usually including a homepage, generally located on the same server, and prepared and maintained as a collection of information by a person, group, or organization. A server is a computer that stores all of the information that is "served" to the person or robot when they "ask" to "see" it.
On its collection of web pages, a website contains images, videos or other digital assets that is hosted on one or several web servers, usually accessible via the Internet, cell phone, or a LAN, (Local Area Network is a computer network that covers a small geographic area, like a home, office, or group of buildings).
Anything its designers and writers want it to be
A website is entertainment, education, enrichment, and enjoyment. It contains art, music, museums, and culture. Further, a website is political, governmental, and religious. And, it is trash, grunge, and filth. In short, a website is anything its designers and writers want it to be. It's us, from all over the world, on electronic pages.
The electronic pages that make up a website may be illuminated with color, graphics, sound, moving pictures and video. Each page can be connected to other pages at various points on the page. These connections are called links and are a different color than the other text (usually blue) and most often underlined.
A Web page is a document, typically written in HTML, (Hyper Text Markup Language), that is almost always accessible via HTTP, (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol,) a protocol that transfers information from the Web server to display in the user's Web browser. A "protocol" is the special set of rules that end points in a telecommunication connection use when they communicate. A "web browser" is a software application that enables a user to display and interact with text, images, videos, music and other information.
A website is not the same thing as a Web page
Though the two terms are often used interchangeably, they should not be. So what's the difference? To put it simply, a Web site is a collection of Web pages. For example, Amazon.com is a Web site, but there are millions of Web pages that make up the site. Knowing the difference between these two terms can save a lot of confusion.
All publicly accessible websites are seen collectively as constituting the "World Wide Web."
The pages of websites can usually be accessed from a common root URL, (Uniform Resource Locator or "domain name") called the homepage, and usually, but not always, reside on the same physical server. The URLs of the pages organize them into a hierarchy, although the hyperlinks between them control how the reader perceives the overall structure and how the traffic flows between the different parts of the sites. "Hyperlinks" are elements that link one page to another with a click of the mouse.
Some websites require a subscription (and password) to access some or all of their content. Examples of subscription sites (sometimes called "membership sites") include many business sites, parts of many news sites, academic journal sites, gaming sites, message boards, Web-based e-mail services, social networking websites, and sites providing real-time stock market data.
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