Artscript Canada Web Business Advantages

How does a website work anyway?

The World Wide Web is like a huge electronic magazine with its pages stored on many computers (called "servers") around the world. Pages on the web are connected by links called "hypertext". Each hypertext link jumps to another page... so unlike reading a book where one page follows another in sequence, on the World Wide Web you follow a web of links to visit the information your are interested in.

What is termed "surfing the web" is clicking through one page to another from hypertext link to hypertext link. You can go on an endless adventure from web page to web page, turning back at any time, or going off in tangents.

To access the World Wide Web you need, a computer, a modem (or some other connection device), a phone line, and software called a "browser"... and an account with an Internet Service Provider. The browser itself is a relatively simple piece of software that interprets a computer code called HTML - or hypertext mark-up language. Most web pages are written in HTML - the browser merely interprets the HTML's instructions to display the text, pictures, play sounds or run animation. The two most popular browsers are Firefox and Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

To get to one of the pages of this electronic magazine, you have to start up your Web browser and enter the address of a web page you wish to visit. Every HTML document on the Web has a Universal Resource Locator or "URL". This is literally the address of that particular HTML document - where it lives on the web. e.g. http://www.artscriptcanada.ca/Mobile

The "http" stands for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol - it tells your web browser what communication protocol to use to receive the document.

The "www" says that the computer you wish to retrieve information from is a web server - a special computer designed to "serve up HTML files".

The next set of words, artscriptcanada, is the domain name of the server you are visiting, it's like the address of that computer.

The domain name is assigned to a nameserver which in turn has an IP address. We use the plain English terms while the computers use the IP address.

The ".ca" means that this particular server is Canadian. The extension (/Mobile) defines a particular file that is called “Mobile” stored on the server.

From time to time you will notice the address in the browser window includes files that end with extensions such as:

.xml - extensible mark up language
.shtml - html with server side includes
.asp - asp server pages
.cfm - cold fusion. Indicates database content.
.php - doesn't stand for anything particular. Indicates database content.

The above are just some of the scripting languages or programming languages.

Questions? contact me: 780-359-2120

Artscript Canada Web Design
The Artscript Canada Business Network and Peace Country on the Web
Web Advantages for Canadian Business

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