| What is a Website ? |
What is a Website ?A website is a collection of pages or other resources that is published to the Internet. It is often simply the equivalent of a printed magazine, and is able to be displayed on your computer if it is connected to the Net.There are many types of website, even though most are basically an online magazine that has content that remains fairly static. For example there are are banking sites, news sites, business sites, forums, wikis, ecommerce sites, membership sites, video sites, streaming 'radio' sites, and gaming sites. Each has a function that allows visitors to acquire information, to perform various actions, or to engage in leisure activities. Why do websites exist ?The web is a new environment that essentially came into existence in the late 1990s when computer ownership and network technology alllowed mass connectivity. It existed for some years before but was under-used. It can best be thought of as an interactive TV environment where information and resources can be freely exchanged in both directions.It has massive implications for business and leisure activities, communities, politics, finance and advertising. It has become the most important global information channel and may become the most important factor in all the previous areas. Website ownership is available to anyone, and a connection to the Net is available to a growing percentage of the world population. The Net will become the single most important business and leisure channel. How do you get a website ?Anyone can own and operate a website. An account is arranged with a web hosting service, who publish your site to the Net. You can build a website locally then upload it to the host - or you can have all the necessary software located at the host. A website is information displayed by software on computers at the host's datacentre. Any other computer connected to the Internet can see that website's pages or resources.What is the difference between the Net and the Web ?Strictly speaking, the Internet or Net is the global cable network plus the central computers that make it run; and the WorldWide Web is the global collection of individually-owned computers that use it. However we now tend to use the terms net and web as interchangeable.The Net was not really invented, it grew and combined into the global network of today. It was started by Licklider and Roberts at ARPANET in 1969, then named the Internet by Vint Cerf at Stanford in 1974. Then 17 years later in 1991, Tim Berners-Lee at CERN invented the HTTP protocol and browser system that allowed widespread connectivity and use of the network, and which came to be known as the web. The Net was invented 22 years before the web, and was named 17 years before the web system came into being, when invented by Berners-Lee. The WorldWide Web consortium (W3 Org) now set the rules for the web code used, and other regulations for the use of the web. ICANN control the issue of domain names for websites. The entire system is a combination of hardware, protocols, software and regulations that has evolved over 40 years and would not work if any factor were missing. The 40th birthday of the Internet, in 2009, marks its maturity as a fully-functional global information system. Modern websitesA website is thus an information node on the web - a way to present your resources to the global audience. It can now perform a huge range of functions, from a simple family information centre, to a multinational business organisation's main operational facility. Webservers will continue to evolve, and the software they support will be capable of more complex functionality, perhaps of types we cannot presently foresee. |