What Is A Website?

What is a Website?

A Website is a collection of WebPages and each WebPage is an Electronic Document.

Just as you have a word document (also an electronic document) stored on your system,  a webpage is document that is stored on another computer (called your host) so that the entire world has the option of accessing it. Collection of WebPages is your Website. Of course the webpages are initially created on your own computer because that is where you begin to build your website. The documents  on your home or business computer can only be viewed by you or others who have direct access to your system. Your neighbour or others cannot read those webpages.

In order for you to allow others across the world  to read your webpages or website,  you must upload them onto a host site which is linked to the world wide web for others to view. Visitors access your website using your Domain Name. The Domain Name is the location where your webpages are stored.

So how do others across the world access or view your website? Each and every website when uploaded to a host computer is given an address; referred to as IP (Internet Protocol) address. This IP address or location is unique for every website on the WWW. The IP address is a series of numbers and since it is difficult to remember numbers, we assign a name to those numbers called a Domain Name. Using your domain name others can access and view your website.

A Domain Name and Website Name are not the same thing. A website name is one you give to your website (it would be on the header or be part of your logo), a domain name is the location of your website or webpages and it is how your visitors will access your website. For instance my website name (learnweb101) and domain name (learnweb101.com) are the same; making it easier for my visitors to remember and also help in reinforcing my domain name to them.  There is nothing wrong with having a different website and domain name, although I would recommend that they be the same.Lets say that I were to change my Website name to “Learning The Web”, you still need to enter “www.learnweb101.com” to visit my site. just entering “learn the web” into the browserwill not get you there.