Web Site Primer

How Does a Web Site Work?

At the most basic level, a web site is simply a bunch of files on a computer that someone can open over the internet.

More specifically, a site needs three parts to be functional:

• an address,
• a computer, and
• the files.

Web Files

A web site consists of a collection of computer files. The foundation of the World-Wide-Web part of the internet is a format called Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) that is used by your browser software to decode your files. HTML is a plain text language that you can create using any word processing software, as long as you know the code words. There are many software products that will help you create the HTML files.

Each web page consists of a main file with all the HTML code and text. If there are images on the page, each image is a separate file that is identified in the HTML code. The combination of files (web pages and images) is what makes up your web site.

Many web sites use additional software for animations, interactive responses, email, databases, and so forth.

Online Computer

In order to be able to see your site, it needs to be on a computer that is accessible from the Internet. A computer that provides such access to files is called a server (since it "serves" files on request).

Very few small business have the skill or resources to have their own web server so the typical site is on server space rented from companies that do (called hosting service). Hosting services vary in the type of server (hardware, operating system...) bandwidth speed, size, technical support and programs on it. Once your site is on a server, anyone with a browser can open it (which copies the files from the server to a temporary directory on their computer and displays it in on their screen).

Web Address

Finally, browsers need to be able to find your site to see it. Each server has a unique address (URL) that is used by the internet to identify the directory associated with your web site. A full URL includes the file format (http://), IP number (255.255.255.1), filename (index.htm) and port number (:80). While computers are fine with IP numbers, people do much better with words, so the system allows the use of domain names (name.com) instead. At a minimum, a URL needs to include the domain name (which "resolves" into an IP number). The http:// is assumed, and if no filename is included then the server looks for the files index.html, index.htm, index.php... based upon the default settings. This is why from time to time you get a list of files when you look for a site - the file index.html does not exist so the server displays an index of files.

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