How Websites Work
The World Wide Web (WWW) is the largest part of The Internet, a huge network comprised of other of networks and millions of individual computers. Internet traffic is routed along a number of "backbones," which are primary networks owned by organizations and companies. The backbones are connected by "hubs" that can move traffic from one backbone to another. The Internet functions using a variety of protocols—rules and standards that people have agreed to use when developing for the Internet and the Web. For instance, Internet participants use a protocol called TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol) that allows computers to communicate with each other. This type of cooperation is essential to keep traffic on the Internet moving and to provide relatively unlimited access to resources on the Internet. Several organizations and consortiums develop and maintain the shared protocols.
The Web itself is comprised of networks of servers and users' computers that exchange Internet resources using Internet protocols. HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol), the primary protocol of the Web, facilitates the exchange of HyperText documents. HypterText documents are plain text documents that contain HTML (HyperText Markup Language), a system of tags placed within the documents to be read and interpreted by browsers, programs that allow users to request, view, and interact with webpages. HTML tags control the appearance of documents in browsers and allow pages to be linked to other pages.
The individual websites that comprise the Web are collections of files including individual web pages and graphics, and sometimes databases and programs that facilitate sophisticated interactivity, such as searching, placing orders, and playing games. Basically, all the files for a site are stored on a computer with special software that allows the computer to act as a "server." As the name suggests, all a server does is "serve" users by providing pages that they request. Users' computers are referred to as "clients." The relationship between servers and users' computers is called a "client/server" relationship.
To use internet resources, people must have access to one of the networks on the internet. This is generally accomplished by establishing a connection from the client computer and a modem to an "Internet Service Provider" (ISP) server that is connected to a network. Examples of ISPs include America OnLine (AOL), earthlink, or a point-to-point (PPP) dial-up connection provided through an organization or company. Clients can then request web pages by accessing the URLs (Uniform Resource Locator) of web pages via browser programs, such as Netscape Navigator, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mosaic, Opera, and Lynx (which is a text-only browser).
Example of a URL. The example explains the function of each part of a URL. Understanding URL's is important because they are related to the directory structure and folder and file names that you use when you create a website.
Learn more about the World Wide Web, its history, and how it works at the University of Albany (a very good source).
Learn more about the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the group that sets the standards for HTML.