Website and Related Topics

World Wide Web

World's dominant software platform.

A global map of the Web Index for countries in 2014

This NeXT Computer was used by Sir Tim Berners-Lee at CERN and became the world's first Web server.

The World Wide Web functions as an application layer protocol that is run "on top of" (figuratively) the Internet, helping to make it more functional. The advent of the Mosaic web browser helped to make the web much more usable, to include the display of images and moving images (GIFs).

$Graphic representation of a minute fraction of the WWW, demonstrating hyperlinks$

A screenshot of a web page on Wikimedia Commons

Dynamic web page: example of server-side scripting (PHP and MySQL)

The inside and front of a Dell PowerEdge web server, a computer designed for rack mounting

Multiple web servers may be used for a high traffic website; here, Dell servers are installed together to be used for the Wikimedia Foundation.

The results of a search for the term "lunar eclipse" in a web-based image search engine

Multiple web resources with a common theme and usually a common domain name make up a website.

Traditional browser arrangement: UI features above page content

Web browser

Application software for accessing the World Wide Web or a local website.

Nicola Pellow and Tim Berners-Lee in 1992

Marc Andreessen, lead developer of Mosaic and Navigator, in 2007

When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the web browser retrieves the necessary content from a web server and then displays the page on the user's device.

Web server

Computer software and underlying hardware that accepts requests via HTTP or its secure variant HTTPS.

The inside and front of a Dell PowerEdge server, a computer designed to be mounted in a rack mount environment. It is often used as a web server.

Multiple web servers may be used for a high traffic website.

Web server farm with thousands of web servers used for super-high traffic websites.

ADSL modem running an embedded web server serving dynamic web pages used for modem configuration.

First web proposal (1989) evaluated as "vague but exciting..."

The world's first web server, a NeXT Computer workstation with Ethernet, 1990. The case label reads: "This machine is a server. DO NOT POWER IT DOWN!!"

Sun's Cobalt Qube 3 – a computer server appliance (2002, discontinued)

PC clients connected to a web server via Internet

PC clients communicating via network with a web server serving static and dynamic content.

Directory listing dynamically generated by a web server.

Chart:
Market share of all sites for most popular web servers 2005–2021

Chart:
Market share of all sites for most popular web servers 1995–2005

A high-traffic Internet website might handle requests with hundreds of servers that run on racks of high-speed computers.

The home page of a website displayed in a web browser

Web page

Hypertext document on the World Wide Web.

A website consists of many web pages linked together under a common domain name.

JavaScript

Programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS.

As of 2022, 98% of websites use JavaScript on the client side for web page behavior, often incorporating third-party libraries.

Hypertext Transfer Protocol

Application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems.

URL beginning with the HTTP scheme and the WWW domain name label

An HTTP/1.1 request made using telnet. The request message, response header section, and response body are highlighted.

A web browser, for example, may be the client whereas a process, named web server, running on a computer hosting one or more websites may be the server.

Sample form. The form is enclosed in an HTML table for visual layout.

Form (HTML)

Sent to a server for processing.

Registration form of PHP-based e-commerce web-shop software ZenCart

Forms are usually combined with programs written in various programming language to allow developers to create dynamic web sites.

PHP

General-purpose scripting language geared toward web development.

This is an example of PHP code for the WordPress content management system.

A "Hello World" application in PHP 7.4 running on its built-in development server

Example output of the phpinfo function in PHP 7.1

A broad overview of the LAMP software bundle, displayed here together with Squid

, PHP was used in more than 240 million websites (39% of those sampled) and was installed on 2.1 million web servers.

Hyperlink

Reference to data that the user can follow by clicking or tapping.

Several documents being connected by hyperlinks

How internal MediaWiki links work when one wants to create a link that displays words different from the linked page's title.

Douglas Engelbart and his team at SRI, 1969

Somewhat controversially, Vuestar Technologies has tried to enforce patents applied for by its owner, Ronald Neville Langford, around the world relating to search techniques using hyperlinked images to other websites or web pages.

HTTP cookie

A possible interaction between a web browser and a web server holding a web page in which the server sends a cookie to the browser and the browser sends it back when requesting another page.

In this fictional example, an advertising company has placed banners in two websites. By hosting the banner images on its servers and using third-party cookies, the advertising company is able to track the browsing of users across these two sites.

A cookie can be stolen by another computer that is allowed reading from the network

Cross-site scripting: a cookie that should be only exchanged between a server and a client is sent to another party.

HTTP cookies (also called web cookies, Internet cookies, browser cookies, or simply cookies) are small blocks of data created by a web server while a user is browsing a website and placed on the user's computer or other device by the user's web browser.