A website (or web site) is a collection of related web pages A web page or webpage is a document or resource of information that is suitable for the World Wide Web and can be accessed through a web browser and displayed on a computer screen, images, videos or other digital assets that are addressed with a common domain name or IP address An Internet Protocol address is a numerical identification and logical address that is assigned to devices participating in a computer network utilizing the Internet Protocol for communication between its nodes. Although IP addresses are stored as binary numbers, they are usually displayed in human-readable notations, such as 208.77.188.166 (for in an Internet Protocol The Internet Protocol is a protocol used for communicating data across a packet-switched internetwork using the Internet Protocol Suite, also referred to as TCP/IP-based network. A web site is hosted on at least one web server A web server has defined load limits, because it can handle only a limited number of concurrent client connections (usually between 2 and 60,000, by default between 500 and 1,000) per IP address (and TCP port) and it can serve only a certain maximum number of requests per second depending on:, accessible via the Internet The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standardized Internet Protocol Suite . It is a network of networks that consists of millions of private and public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope that are linked by copper wires, fiber-optic cables, wireless connections, and or a private local area network A local area network is a computer network covering a small physical area, like a home, office, or small group of buildings, such as a school, or an airport. The defining characteristics of LANs, in contrast to wide-area networks (WANs), include their usually higher data-transfer rates, smaller geographic place, and lack of a need for leased.

A web page is a document A document is a bounded physical representation of body of information designed with the capacity (and usually intent) to communicate. A document may manifest symbolic, diagrammatic or sensory-representational information. To document (verb) is to produce a document artifact by collecting and representing information. In prototypical usage, a, typically written in plain text The encoding has traditionally been either ASCII, one of its many derivatives such as ISO/IEC 646 etc., or sometimes EBCDIC. No other encodings are used in plain text files which neither contain any structural tags such as heading marks, nor any typographic markers like bold face, italics, etc interspersed with formatting instructions of Hypertext Markup Language HTML, an initialism for Hypertext Mark-up Language, is the predominant markup language for web pages. It provides a means to describe the structure of text-based information in a document—by denoting certain text as links, headings, paragraphs, lists, etc.—and to supplement that text with interactive forms, embedded images, and other objects (HTML, XHTML The Extensible Hypertext Markup Language, or XHTML, is a markup language that has the same depth of expression as HTML, but also conforms to XML syntax). A web page may incorporate elements from other web sites with suitable markup anchors In computing, an HTML element indicates structure in an HTML document and a way of hierarchically arranging content. More specifically, an HTML element is an SGML element that meets the requirements of one or more of the HTML Document Type Definitions . These elements have properties: both attributes and content, as specified (both allowable and.

Web pages are accessed and transported with the Hypertext Transfer Protocol Hypertext Transfer Protocol is an application-level protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. Its use for retrieving inter-linked resources led to the establishment of the World Wide Web (HTTP), which may optionally employ encryption (HTTP Secure Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure is a combination of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol and a cryptographic protocol. HTTPS connections are often used for payment transactions on the World Wide Web and for sensitive transactions in corporate information systems, HTTPS) to provide security and privacy for the user of the web page content. The user's application, often a web browser A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content. Hyperlinks present in resources enable users to easily navigate their browsers to, renders the page content according to its HTML markup instructions onto a display terminal.

All publicly accessible web sites collectively constitute the World Wide Web The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a Web browser, one can view Web pages that may contain text, images, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them using hyperlinks. Using concepts from earlier hypertext systems, the World Wide Web was started in 1989 by the English.

The pages of a web site can usually be accessed from a simple Uniform Resource Locator In computing, a Uniform Resource Locator is a type of Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) that specifies where an identified resource is available and the mechanism for retrieving it. In popular usage and in many technical documents and verbal discussions it is often incorrectly used as a synonym for URI. In popular language, a URL is also referred (URL) called the homepage The homepage is the URL or local file that automatically loads when a web browser starts or when the browser's "home" button is pressed. You can turn this feature off and on, as well as specify a URL for the page to be loaded. The URLs of the pages organize them into a hierarchy, although hyperlinking Hyperlinks , are a word or several words in a document whose function is to direct e.g. a web browser to the address (local or remote) they link to when clicked on. (E.G. in an article about Wikipedia, expect the word "Wikipedia" to be blue, like this: Wikipedia) between them conveys the reader's perceived site structure A site map is a list of pages of a web site accessible to crawlers or users. It can be either a document in any form used as a planning tool for web design, or a web page that lists the pages on a web site, typically organized in hierarchical fashion. This helps visitors and search engine bots find pages on the site and guides the reader's navigation of the site.

Some web sites require a subscription The subscription business model is a business model where a customer must pay a subscription price to have access to the product/service. The model was pioneered by magazines and newspapers, but is now used by many businesses and websites. Rather than selling products individually, a subscription sells periodic use or access to a product or to access some or all of their content. Examples of subscription sites include many business sites, parts of many news News is any single new information or information on current events which is presented by print, broadcast, Internet, or word of mouth to a third party or mass audience sites, academic journal An academic journal is a peer-reviewed periodical in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. Academic journals serve as forums for the introduction and presentation for scrutiny of new research, and the critique of existing research. Content typically takes the form of articles presenting original research, sites, gaming sites, message boards In the United States and some parts of Europe, most Internet forums require registration to post. Registered users of the site are referred to as members and are allowed to submit or send electronic messages through the web application. The process of registration involves verification of one's age followed by a declaration of the terms of service, web-based e-mail An electronic mail message consists of two components, the message header, and the message body, which is the email's content. The message header contains control information, including, minimally, an originator's email address and one or more recipient addresses. Usually additional information is added, such as a subject header field, services, social networking A social network service focuses on building online communities of people who share interests and/or activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others. Most social network services are web based and provide a variety of ways for users to interact, such as e-mail and instant messaging services web sites, and sites providing real-time stock market A stock market is a public market for the trading of company stock and derivatives at an agreed price; these are securities listed on a stock exchange as well as those only traded privately data.

History

The World Wide Web was created in 1990 by CERN engineer Tim Berners-Lee Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee, OM, KBE, FRS, FREng, FRSA , is an English computer scientist and MIT professor credited with inventing the World Wide Web – making the first proposal in March 1989. On 25 December 1990, with the help of Robert Cailliau and a young student staff at CERN, he implemented the first successful communication between an.^[1] On 30 April 1993, CERN The European Organization for Nuclear Research , known as CERN (see Naming), pronounced /ˈsɜrn/ (French pronunciation: [sɛʀn]), is the world's largest particle physics laboratory, situated in the northwest suburbs of Geneva on the Franco-Swiss border, established in 1954. The organization has twenty European member states, and is currently the announced that the World Wide Web would be free to use for anyone.^[2]

Before the introduction of HTML and HTTP other protocols such as file transfer protocol File Transfer Protocol is a standard network protocol used to exchange and manipulate files over an Internet Protocol computer network, such as the Internet. FTP is built on a client-server architecture and utilizes separate control and data connections between the client and server applications. Client applications were originally interactive and the gopher protocol The Gopher protocol is a TCP/IP Application layer protocol designed for distributing, searching, and retrieving documents over the internet, and was an alternative to the World Wide Web. The protocol offers some features not natively supported by the Web and imposes a much stronger hierarchy on information stored on it. Its text menu interface is were used to retrieve individual files from a server. These protocols offer a simple directory structure which the user navigates and chooses files to download. Documents were most often presented as plain text files without formatting or were encoded in word processor A word processor is a computer application used for the production (including composition, editing, formatting, and possibly printing) of any sort of printable material formats.

Overview

Organized by function, a website may be

• a personal website Personal web pages are World Wide Web pages created by an individual to contain content of a personal nature. The content can be about that person or about something he or she is interested in. Personal web pages can be the entire content of a domain name belonging to the person , or can be a page or pages that are part of a larger domain on which
• a commercial website A website is a collection of related web pages, images, videos or other digital assets that are addressed with a common domain name or IP address in an Internet Protocol-based network. A web site is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via the Internet or a private local area network
• a government website e-Government is a diffused neologism used to refer to the use of information and communication technology to provide and improve government services, transactions and interactions with citizens, businesses, and other arms of government
• a non-profit organization A nonprofit organization is an organization that does not distribute its surplus funds to owners or shareholders, but instead uses them to help pursue its goals. Examples of NPOs include charities, trade unions, and public arts organizations. Most governments and government agencies meet this definition, but in most countries they are considered a website

It could be the work of an individual, a business or other organization, and is typically dedicated to some particular topic or purpose. Any website can contain a hyperlink to any other website, so the distinction between individual sites, as perceived by the user, may sometimes be blurred.

Websites are written in, or dynamically converted to, HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) and are accessed using a software Software includes websites, programs, video games, etc. that are coded by programming languages like C, C++, etc interface classified as a user agent A user agent is the client application used with a particular network protocol; the phrase is most commonly used in reference to those which access the World Wide Web. Other systems, such as Session Initiation Protocol , use the term user agent to refer to both end points of a phone call, server and client. Web pages can be viewed or otherwise accessed from a range of computer-based and Internet-enabled devices of various sizes, including desktop computers, laptops, PDAs and cell phones.

A website is hosted A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that allows individuals and organizations to provide their own website accessible via the World Wide Web. Web hosts are companies that provide space on a server they own or lease for use by their clients as well as providing Internet connectivity, typically in a data center. Web hosts can on a computer system A computer is a machine that manipulates data according to a set of instructions known as a web server A web server has defined load limits, because it can handle only a limited number of concurrent client connections (usually between 2 and 60,000, by default between 500 and 1,000) per IP address (and TCP port) and it can serve only a certain maximum number of requests per second depending on:, also called an HTTP server, and these terms can also refer to the software Software includes websites, programs, video games, etc. that are coded by programming languages like C, C++, etc that runs on these systems and that retrieves and delivers the web pages in response to requests from the website users. Apache The Apache HTTP Server, commonly referred to as Apache , is a web server notable for playing a key role in the initial growth of the World Wide Web and in 2009 became the first web server to surpass the 100 million web site milestone . Apache was the first viable alternative to the Netscape Communications Corporation web server (currently known as is the most commonly used web server software (according to Netcraft Netcraft is an Internet services company based in Bath, England statistics) and Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an United States-based multinational computer technology corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of software products for computing devices. Headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA, its most profitable products are the Microsoft Windows operating system and the Microsoft Office suite's Internet Information Server Internet Information Services - formerly called Internet Information Server - is a set of Internet-based services for servers created by Microsoft for use with Microsoft Windows. It is the world's second most popular web server in terms of overall websites behind the industry leader Apache HTTP Server. As of April 2009[update] it served 29.27% of (IIS) is also commonly used.

Website styles

Static website

A static website is one that has web pages stored on the server in the format that is sent to a client web browser. It is primarily coded in Hypertext Markup Language HTML, an initialism for Hypertext Mark-up Language, is the predominant markup language for web pages. It provides a means to describe the structure of text-based information in a document—by denoting certain text as links, headings, paragraphs, lists, etc.—and to supplement that text with interactive forms, embedded images, and other objects (HTML).

Simple forms or marketing examples of websites, such as classic website, a five-page website or a brochure website are often static websites, because they present pre-defined, static information to the user. This may include information about a company and its products and services via text, photos, Flash animation, audio/video and interactive menus and navigation.

This type of website usually displays the same information to all visitors. Similar to handing out a printed brochure to customers or clients, a static website will generally provide consistent, standard information for an extended period of time. Although the website owner may make updates periodically, it is a manual process to edit the text, photos and other content and may require basic website design skills and software.

In summary, visitors are not able to control what information they receive via a static website, and must instead settle for whatever content the website owner has decided to offer at that time.

They are edited using four broad categories of software:

• Text editors Text editors are often provided with operating systems or software development packages, and can be used to change configuration files and programming language source code, such as Notepad Notepad is a simple text editor included in all versions of Microsoft Windows since Windows 1.0 in 1985 or TextEdit TextEdit is a simple, open source word processor and text editor, first featured in NeXT's NEXTSTEP and OPENSTEP. It is now distributed with Mac OS X since Apple Inc.'s acquisition of NeXT, and available as a GNUstep application for other Unix-compatible operating systems such as Linux. It is powered by Apple Advanced Typography and has advanced, where content and HTML markup are manipulated directly within the editor program
• WYSIWYG offline editors, such as Microsoft FrontPage and Adobe Dreamweaver (previously Macromedia Dreamweaver), with which the site is edited using a GUI interface and the final HTML markup is generated automatically by the editor software
• WYSIWYG online editors, where any media rich online presentation like websites, widgets, intro, blogs etc. are created on a flash based platform
• Template-based editors, such as Rapidweaver and iWeb, which allow users to quickly create and upload websites to a web server without having to know anything about HTML, as they just pick a suitable template from a palette and add pictures and text to it in a DTP-like fashion without ever having to see any HTML code

Dynamic website

A dynamic website is one that changes or customizes content automatically and/or frequently based on certain criteria. The page composition is usually data-driven and collates information ad hoc each time a page is requested.

A website can be dynamic in one of two ways. The first is that the web page code is constructed dynamically. The second is that the web page content displayed varies based on certain criteria. The criteria may be pre-defined rules or may be based on variable user input.

The main purpose of a dynamic website is that it is much simpler to maintain a few template pages and a database than it is to build and update hundreds or thousands of individual web pages and links.

A dynamic website also describes its construction or how it is built, and more specifically refers to the code used to create a single web page. A dynamic web page is generated on the fly by piecing together certain blocks of code, procedures or routines. A dynamically-generated web page would call various bits of information from a database and put them together in a pre-defined format to present the reader with a coherent page. It interacts with users in a variety of ways including by reading cookies recognizing users' previous history, session variables, server side variables etc., or by using direct interaction (form elements, mouseovers, etc.). A site can display the current state of a dialogue between users, monitor a changing situation, or provide information in some way personalized to the requirements of the individual user.

Some countries, for example the U.K. and the U.S., have introduced legislation regarding web accessibility.

Software systems

There are a wide range of software systems, such as Java Server Pages (JSP), the PHP and Perl programming languages, Active Server Pages (ASP), YUMA and Cold Fusion (CFM) that are available to generate dynamic web systems and dynamic sites. Sites may also include content that is retrieved from one or more databases or by using XML-based technologies such as RSS.

Static content may also be dynamically generated either periodically, or if certain conditions for regeneration occur (cached) in order to avoid the performance loss of initiating the dynamic engine on a per-user or per-connection basis.

Plug ins are available to expand the features and abilities of web browsers, which use them to show active content, such as Flash, Shockwave or applets written in Java. Dynamic HTML also provides for user interactivity and realtime element updating within web pages (i.e., pages don't have to be loaded or reloaded to effect any changes), mainly using the DOM and JavaScript, support which is built-in to most modern web browsers.

Turning a website into an income source is a common practice for web developers and website owners. There are several methods for creating a website business which fall into two broad categories, as defined below.

Content based sites

Some websites derive revenue by selling advertising space on the site (see contextual ads).

Product or service based sites

Some websites derive revenue by offering products or services for sale. In the case of e-commerce websites, the products or services may be purchased at the website itself, by entering credit card or other payment information into a payment form on the site. While most business websites serve as a shop window for existing brick and mortar businesses, it is increasingly the case that some websites are businesses in their own right; that is, the products they offer are only available for purchase on the web.

Websites occasionally derive income from a combination of these two practices. For example, a website such as an online auctions website may charge the users of its auction service to list an auction, but also display third-party advertisements on the site, from which it derives further income.

Spelling

As noted above, there are several different spellings for this term. Although website and web site are commonly used (the former especially in British English), the Associated Press Style book, Reuters, Microsoft, academia, book publishing, The Chicago Manual of Style, and dictionaries such as Merriam-Webster use the two-word, initially capitalized spelling Web site. This is because "Web" is not a general term but a shortened form of World Wide Web. As with many newly created terms, it may take some time before a common spelling is finalized. (This controversy also applies to derivative terms such as Web master/webmaster and Web cam/web cam).

The Canadian Oxford Dictionary and the Canadian Press Style book list "website" and "web page" as the preferred spellings. The Oxford English Dictionary began using "website" as its standardized form in 2004.^[3]

Bill Walsh, the copy chief of The Washington Post's national desk, and one of American English's foremost grammarians, argues for the two-word spelling with capital W in his books Lapsing into a Comma and The Elephants of Style, and on his site, the Slot.^[4]

Types of websites

There are many varieties of websites, each specializing in a particular type of content or use, and they may be arbitrarily classified in any number of ways. A few such classifications might include:^{[original research?]}

• Affiliate: enabled portal that renders not only its custom CMS but also syndicated content from other content providers for an agreed fee. There are usually three relationship tiers. Affiliate Agencies (e.g., Commission Junction), Advertisers (e.g., eBay) and consumer (e.g., Yahoo!).
• Archive site: used to preserve valuable electronic content threatened with extinction. Two examples are: Internet Archive, which since 1996 has preserved billions of old (and new) web pages; and Google Groups, which in early 2005 was archiving over 845,000,000 messages posted to Usenet news/discussion groups.
• Blog (or web log) site: sites generally used to post online diaries which may include discussion forums (e.g., blogger, Xanga).
• Content site: sites whose business is the creation and distribution of original content (e.g., Slate, About.com).
• Corporate website: used to provide background information about a business, organization, or service.
• Commerce site (or eCommerce site): for purchasing goods, such as Amazon.com, CSN Stores, and Overstock.com.
• Community site: a site where persons with similar interests communicate with each other, usually by chat or message boards, such as MySpace or Facebook.
• City Site: A site that shows information about a certain city or town and events that takes place in that town. Usually created by the city council or other "movers and shakers".

• the same as those of geographic entities, such as cities and countries. For example, Richmond.com is the geodomain for Richmond, Virginia.
• Gripe site: a site devoted to the critique of a person, place, corporation, government, or institution.
• Humor site: satirizes, parodies or otherwise exists solely to amuse.
• Information site: contains content that is intended to inform visitors, but not necessarily for commercial purposes, such as: RateMyProfessors.com, Free Internet Lexicon and Encyclopedia. Most government, educational and non-profit institutions have an informational site.
• Java applet site: contains software to run over the Web as a Web application.
• Mirror site: A complete reproduction of a website.
• News site: similar to an information site, but dedicated to dispensing news and commentary.
• Personal homepage: run by an individual or a small group (such as a family) that contains information or any content that the individual wishes to include. These are usually uploaded using a web hosting service such as Geocities.
• Phish site: a website created to fraudulently acquire sensitive information, such as passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy person or business (such as Social Security Administration, PayPal) in an electronic communication (see Phishing).
• Political site: A site on which people may voice political views.
• Porn site: A site that shows sexually explicit content for enjoyment and relaxation, most likely in the form of an internet gallery, dating site, blog, or video sharing.
• Rating site: A site on which people can praise or disparage what is featured.
• Review site: A site on which people can post reviews for products or services.
• School site: a site on which teachers, students, or administrators can post information about current events at or involving their school. U.S. websites generally uses k12 in the URL such as kearney.k12.mo.us.
• Video sharing: A site that enables user to upload videos, such as YouTube and Google Video.
• Search engine site: a site that provides general information and is intended as a gateway or lookup for other sites. A pure example is Google, and the most widely known extended type is Yahoo!.
• Shock site: includes images or other material that is intended to be offensive to most viewers (e.g. rotten.com).
• Warez: a site designed to host and let users download copyrighted materials illegally.
• Web portal: a site that provides a starting point or a gateway to other resources on the Internet or an intranet.
• Wiki site: a site which users collaboratively edit (such as Wikipedia and Wikihow).

Some websites may be included in one or more of these categories. For example, a business website may promote the business's products, but may also host informative documents, such as white papers. There are also numerous sub-categories to the ones listed above. For example, a porn site is a specific type of eCommerce site or business site (that is, it is trying to sell memberships for access to its site). A fan site may be a dedication from the owner to a particular celebrity.

Websites are constrained by architectural limits (e.g., the computing power dedicated to the website). Very large websites, such as Yahoo!, Microsoft, and Google employ many servers and load balancing equipment such as Cisco Content Services Switches to distribute visitor loads over multiple computers at multiple locations.

In February 2009, Netcraft, an Internet monitoring company that has tracked Web growth since 1995, reported that there were 215,675,903 websites with domain names and content on them in 2009, compared to just 18,000 websites in August 1995.

Awards

The Webby Awards are a set of awards presented to the world's best websites, a concept pioneered by Best of the Web in 1994.

See also

• Cognitive metaphor
• Cyberspace
• Downtime
• Extranet website
• Google guidelines
• Intranet website
• List of content management systems
• List of websites
• Rational (WebSphere) Application Developer
• Rating sites
• Real user monitoring
• Search Engine Optimization
• Spyware
• Staging site
• Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web
• Uptime
• Web design
• Website Design Process Steps
• Web development
• Web analytics
• Web application
• Web content management
• Web hosting
• Website awards
• Website monitoring
• Website architecture
• Web Services Security
• Web service
• Webmaster
• World Wide Web Consortium (Web standards)
• Yahoo! Site Explorer

References

1. ^ "The website of the world's first-ever web server". http://info.cern.ch/. Retrieved on 2008-08-30.
2. ^ Cailliau, Robert. "A Little History of the World Wide Web". http://www.w3.org/History.html. Retrieved on 2007-02-16.
3. ^ "Ask Oxford: How should the term website be written in official documents and on the web?". Oxford Dictionaries Online. http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq/usage/website?view=uk.
4. ^ "The Slot—Sharp Points: Here We Go Again—Eeee!". http://www.theslot.com/email.html.

External links

• Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)
• World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
• The Internet Society (ISOC)

Categories: Websites

See Also:

• Home
• PHP
• GUI
• XML
• News

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