Foundation

So, what exactly is a website anyway? You've probably been to plenty of them, but have you ever given thought to what makes them tick? If you're lucky, perhaps not. Ideally websites should be like TV: You don't need to know how a signal processor works to be entertained by a TV show. Because the underlying technologies of websites are so accessible and because the Web is so new (relatively speaking), sometimes web pages don't exactly work like that. If you've ever seen a JavaScript error, you probably encountered one of the reasons why people spend more time wondering how websites work than perhaps they should.

In essence a website is a collection of web pages built on the core technologies of HTML, HTTP, Web Browsers and Web Servers. That may not mean much to you now, but those four elements are pretty much all it takes to create a web page and when you add hyperlinks into the mix which connect similar pages you get a web site. When you expand the scope of those hyperlinks (usually shortened to just “links”) to many sites of varying subject matters you get, essentially, the World Wide Web.

Perhaps let's take it one step at a time.

Code

Web pages are encoded using a markup language called HTML. HTML is a collection of specified characters which surround blocks of plain text and inform an HTML rendering engine how the text should be displayed. Most browsers have a View Source option where you can take a look at the HTML of any given web page. Go on and give it a try if you like.

HTML isn't as complex as a programming language; any designer or developer that tries to tell you otherwise is a scoundrel. HTML does have some other functions besides simply acting as a manual word processing routine—there are elements of HTML which are used to describe the placement of images or describe the characteristics of the document—but the essence of HTML is display.

Observe

Even if you're not completely aware of it, you're already very familiar with the concept of a Web Browser. If you're reading this page, you are reading it in a browser. Browsers are programs that use a connection to the Internet to access web pages (written in HTML, remember) and then convert that HTML into the pages you see. The HTML may indicate that the word 'Observe' above should be displayed larger than the surrounding text, but it is the browser that takes this indication and makes it happen.

What some people don't realize is that whatever browser came with your computer is not the only browser available to you. You may have heard the term “Browser Wars” in passing before. This refers to the competition between different browser developers to try and convince as many people as possible to use their product. Some common browsers are Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Mozilla's FireFox and Apple's Safari.

The differences in browsers are usually subtle; generally speaking all of them will take a basic HTML document and convert it into the friendly web page you want to look at. Sometimes browsers have different features which are supposed to make pages display (or “render”) faster or allow you to surf more than one site at a time. Occasionally different browsers will interpret HTML in slightly different ways, which can make the job of a web designer more difficult than it needs to be.

Fortunately, experienced designers and developers know to keep abreast of the discrepancies between browsers and work hard to make sure that all users have an enjoyable experience.

Manage

We mentioned above that browsers “access” HTML documents. What we didn't say was where those documents come from. The answer is that browsers retrieve web pages from a Web Server. Servers are usually powerful computers that have persistent connections to the Internet and run special software which tells them when someone is trying to access the web site they're associated with. When a connection request is made, the server sends a copy of the requested HTML file to the requesting browser using a technology called HTTP. Servers are usually powerful because for sites that get a lot of requests (called “traffic”), the server may have to send hundreds or hundreds of thousands of copies of the HTML documents it contains per second!

Every website needs a site server, and while HTML is accessible and fairly easy to understand the basics of, the other half of the website equation can be frustrating or confusing to people who don't have a lot of time to devote to studying network administration or computer science. Sometimes it can be useful even if you have designed a site yourself to let a professional help with the deployment phase of a site project where the site files are uploaded to a server and your chosen site name is applied so people can see your work by going to the web address you've selected.

Hesitation

Hopefully you have a better idea now of what makes a site tick. The next obvious question is, should you go ahead and get one?