Website

A website, Web site or WWW site (often shortened to just site) is a collection of Web pages, that is, HTML/XHTML documents accessible generally via HTTP on the Internet; all publicly accessible websites in existence comprise the World Wide Web. The pages of a website will be accessed from a common root URL, the homepage, and usually 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 site.

Overview

A website will often be the work of an individual, a business or organization, or dedicated to a particular topic or purpose. This is quite a blurry definition, given the hypertext nature of the web: the whole of Wikipedia forms a website, but whether the Meta-Wikipedia pages are part of the same website or a sister website is open to debate.

Related Topics:
Hypertext - Wikipedia

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Websites are written in, or dynamically converted to, HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) and are accessed using a software package called a web browser. Web pages can be viewed on computers or various portable devices (PDAs, cell phones, etc.) that have internet-capable functionality and an available internet connection.

Related Topics:
Software - Web browser

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Static websites can be created using text editors like Notepad or WYSIWYG editors like Frontpage and Dreamweaver. Active Server Pages (ASP), Java Server Pages (JSP) and/or a host of other dynamic web-scripting languages can also be used to generate web pages. Static content may also be dynamically generated periodically or if certain conditions for regeneration occur (cached) to avoid the performance loss of initiating the dynamic engine on a per-user or per-connection basis.

Related Topics:
Notepad - WYSIWYG - Frontpage - Dreamweaver - Active Server Pages - Java Server Pages

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A website also requires software known as an HTTP Server, two very common examples include Apache, the most commonly used web server software used on the Internet (according to Netcraft statistics), and Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS). Often websites may include content that is pulled from one or more databases or using XML-based technologies such as RSS.

Related Topics:
HTTP Server - Apache - Netcraft - Microsoft - Internet Information Server - Database - XML - RSS

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Plugins are also available for 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 for which is built-in to most modern browsers.

Related Topics:
Plugin - Flash - Shockwave - Applet - Java - Dynamic HTML - DOM - JavaScript

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