What are websites?
A website or web site is a collection
of related network web resources,
such as web pages, multimedia
content, which are typically identified
with a common domain name, and
published on at least one web
server. Notable examples are wikipedia.org,
google.com, and amazon.com.
Websites can be accessed via
a public Internet Protocol (IP)
network, such as the Internet,
or a private local area network
(LAN), by a uniform resource locator
(URL) that identifies the site.
Websites can have many functions
and can be used in various fashions;
a website can be a personal website,
a corporate website for a company,
a government website, an organization
website, etc. Websites are typically
dedicated to a particular topic
or purpose, ranging from entertainment
and social networking to providing
news and education. All publicly
accessible websites collectively
constitute the World Wide Web,
while private websites, such as
a company's website for its employees,
are typically part of an intranet.
Web pages, which are the building
blocks of websites, are documents,
typically composed in plain text
interspersed with formatting instructions
of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML,
XHTML). They may incorporate elements
from other websites with suitable
markup anchors. Web pages are
accessed and transported with
the Hypertext Transfer Protocol
(HTTP), which may optionally employ
encryption (HTTP Secure, HTTPS)
to provide security and privacy
for the user. The user's application,
often a web browser, renders the
page content according to its
HTML markup instructions onto
a display terminal.
Hyperlinking between web pages
conveys to the reader the site
structure and guides the navigation
of the site, which often starts
with a home page containing a
directory of the site web content.
Some websites require user registration
or subscription to access content.
Examples of subscription websites
include many business sites, news
websites, academic journal websites,
gaming websites, file-sharing
websites, message boards, web-based
email, social networking websites,
websites providing real-time stock
market data, as well as sites
providing various other services.
End users can access websites
on a range of devices, including
desktop and laptop computers,
tablet computers, smartphones
and smart TVs.*
