Internet is a world-wide computer-based network used for information sharing and communication. It is really a large number of smaller networks interconnected to each other. This interconnected network links several computers and enables sharing of information and computer-based resources such as data and computing power.
In this blog article we look at some of the basic terms related to Internet
Web Browser:
A web browser is a software or program on a computer that retrieves information from the Internet. Through the web browser program you visit different sites on the Internet by entering an address or URL in the browser address bar.
There are many browsers available for users, such as, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Edge, Safari etc.
Webpage:
A digital page or document hosted on any computer/server and available through Internet.
A webpage is a digital document on the Internet, accessed by end users through a web browser.
A webpage can be composed of text, image, video, sound, graphics etc. A webpage can also be connected/linked to other webpages through links (called Hyperlink). When clicked on the link, it takes you to that new webpage. This combination of digital text, images, videos, graphics, sounds etc. along with links to other web pages, is called Hypertext. A webpage is generally written using Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML).
Web address - URL:
A Uniform Resource Locator (URL) denotes the unique address of a webpage on the Internet. A particular location on an Internet webserver is called a website and each website has a unique address denoted by an URL (Uniform Resource Locator). For example, website of Yahoo! has the URL https://www.yahoo.com.
A URL is composed of 3 parts and look like this: type://address/path
type: denotes the type of server on which the resource is located,
address: the internet address of the server computer,
path: the location of the resource on the server.
Web site:
A web site is a group/collection of interconnected webpages. A webpage is a digital document composed of text, images, sounds, videos, graphics etc., and is written in HTML. The web pages of a web site are linked together through hyperlinks and share common design (also called, look and feel).
Essentially, a website is a digital medium created by an organization or individual to deliver information and promote interaction around the products, services or solutions they offer.
A website has an address (also called URL of the site). When you want to see/visit a website, you need to enter this address in the web browser and the contents of the site is delivered by the webserver.
Every website has a home page. This is the first webpage that is displayed in the browser when you visit the website. As you click on other links on the homepage you are served different content from the website.
Web server:
A Web server is any computer that hosts web resources/websites on the Internet and delivers web pages to users upon request.
Thus, a webserver computer receives requests from client computers, processes the request based on request parameters and sends the output back to the client computer. There can be other kinds of servers, but webservers only respond to web-based requests/actions.
Web server program/software is always running on the remote computer, waiting for requests from the end-user web browser. Few popular web server software are Apache httpd, IIS and nginx.
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