Building Your Own Website from the Ground Up

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What is a Website?

  • A website consists of one or more "pages" that may be accessed by a web browser.
  • A web browser is a piece of software that runs on your local computer but shows content from a website hosted on a web server.
  • A web server is a computer located at a particular address on the internet that is configured to respond to requests from web browsers and provide "pages" of content.
  • A web server consists of hardware that provides data storage, connection to the internet, and computing power (Central Processing Unit [CPU] cycles plus RAM).
  • Most web servers are "virtual machines." They share hard disks, internet connections, CPU cycles, and RAM with many other websites. The real hardware is split up into pieces of the hard disk, CPU time, and memory so that websites take turns using the system resources.
  • The two most popular flavors of web server operating systems are linux and Windows Server.
  • The Apache HTTP Server is one of the most popular pieces of software used in linux systems to receive browser requests and provide data ("pages") in response.
  • An "IP address" is an "Internet Protocol address," a unique number that identifies a computer on a network; the whole internet is nothing but a set of uniquely identified computers that can send packets of information to each other by means of their IP addresses.
  • A page is a handy metaphor for "everything we see on our computer screen in response to a request we made of a server through our browser." The metaphor must not be pressed too closely; the content displayed in a browser by a server can be much more subtle and dynamic than a piece of paper or a page in a book.
A browser sends requests to websites.
Websites return "pages" to browsers.

What is a Domain Name?

  • A Domain Name is a human-readable alias for an IP address that is used in a URL.
  • You may build a website without a domain name. You would then distribute the IP Address in your URLs for the site. If you want to have a domain name, you must purchase the rights to a name from a Domain Name Registrar.
  • A URL is a "Universal Resource Locator" (or "Uniform Resource Locator") that allows a browser to connect to a particular part ("page") of a website.
URL Protocol Separator Domain Name or IP Address Specific "page"
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