Website

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A website, Web site or WWW site (often shortened to just site) is a collection of Web pages, that is, HTML/XHTML documents accessible generally via HTTP on the Internet; all publicly accessible websites in existence comprise the World Wide Web. The pages of a website will be accessed from a common root URL, the homepage, and usually reside on the same physical server. The URLs of the pages organize them into a hierarchy, although the hyperlinks between them control how the reader perceives the overall structure and how the traffic flows between the different parts of the site.

Some websites require a subscription to access some or all of their content. Examples of subscription sites include many Internet pornography sites, parts of many news sites, gaming sites, message boards, web-based e-mail services and sites providing real-time stock market data.

Contents

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Overview

A website will often be the work of an individual, a business or organization, or dedicated to a particular topic or purpose. This is quite a blurry definition, given the hypertext nature of the web: the whole of Wikipedia forms a website, but whether the Meta-Wikipedia pages are part of the same website or a sister website is open to debate.

Websites are written in, or dynamically converted to, HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) and are accessed using a software package called a web browser. Web pages can be viewed on computers or various portable devices (PDAs, cell phones, etc.) that have internet-capable functionality and an available internet connection.

Static websites can be created using text editors like Notepad or WYSIWYG editors like Frontpage and Dreamweaver. Active Server Pages (ASP), Java Server Pages (JSP) and/or a host of other dynamic web-scripting languages can also be used to generate web pages. Static content may also be dynamically generated periodically or if certain conditions for regeneration occur (cached) to avoid the performance loss of initiating the dynamic engine on a per-user or per-connection basis.

A website also requires software known as an HTTP Server, two very common examples include Apache, the most commonly used web server software used on the Internet (according to Netcraft statistics), and Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS). Often websites may include content that is pulled from one or more databases or using XML-based technologies such as RSS.

Plugins are also available for browsers, which use them to show active content, such as Flash, Shockwave or applets written in Java. Dynamic HTML also provides for user interactivity and realtime element updating within web pages (i.e., pages don't have to be loaded or reloaded to effect any changes), mainly using the DOM and JavaScript, support for which is built-in to most modern browsers.

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Types of websites

There are numerous types of websites, each specializing in a particular service or use. A few types of websites include:

Many websites are a mixture of types. For example, a business website may promote the business's products, but may also host informative documents, such as white papers. There are also numerous sub-categories to the ones listed above. For example, a porn site is a specific type of eCommerce site or business site (that is, it is trying to sell memberships for access to its site). A fan site may be a vanity site on which the administrator is paying homage to a celebrity.

Many business websites have the appearance of brochures—that is, an advertisement that can be strolled around. Some websites act as vehicles for users to communicate with other people via webchat.

Websites are constrained by architectural limits (e.g. the computing power dedicated to the website). Very large websites, such as Yahoo!, Microsoft, Google and most other very large sites employ several servers and load balancing equipment, such as Cisco Content Services Switches or F5 BigIP solutions.

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Mousetrapping

Mousetrapping is a technique employed by some "aggressive" commercial websites, especially ones that are pornographic in nature, that prevents the user from leaving the site, depending on web browser settings. Typically this form of trapping is employed by the use of Javascript code (or Dynamic HTML) that detects a user's attempt to either close the browser window or leave the website to view another website. These attempts may easily fail if the user disabled javascript on their web browser; however, disabling Javascript may also impact how well certain pages on the current site or other websites load. Tools such as pop-up blockers can help in preventing this annoyance but by no means will solve the problem entirely.

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Prizes

The Webby Awards are a set of awards presented to the world's "best" websites.

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Spelling

As noted above, there are several different spellings for this term. Although "website" is becoming the most commonly used—particularly by newspapers and other media—academia (and some dictionaries such as Oxford) still prefer to use the two-word, capitalized spelling "Web site". An alternate version of the two-word spelling is not capitalized. As with many other newly created terms, it may take some time before a common spelling is finalized. (This controversy also applies to derivative terms such as "Web master"/"webmaster".)

The Associated Press Stylebook, the preeminent authority in newspaper style, suggests "Web site" and "Web page". "WWW site" is almost never acceptable.

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See also

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External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Website"
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