In this post I am going to assume you know absolutly nothing about the inner workings of the internet and how people actually get to websites. Lets even assume you don’t know where the actual website sits.
Did you know that with a little knowledge you too could quickly get into building a website? No I am not talking painful micro-details that a designing nerd like myself would be into, but just enough so that you have a bacis understanding of what is going on.
First, what is the web? Simply put the web is a ton of interconnecting computers that are talking to each other. The computers are typically connected by phone lines, digital satellite signals, cables, and other types of data-transfer mechanisms. These computers have a way to move information from point A to point B to point C and so on.
These computers are normally connected to the computer 24/7 and are typically called a “server”. Servers are computers just like the one you’re using now to read this article, with one major difference, they have a special software installed called ‘server’ software.
What is the function of server programs? The word Server gives us a clue. Server software is created to ‘serve’ web pages and web sites. Basically, the server computer has a bunch of web sites loaded on it and it just waits for people to request or ask for a particular page. When the browser requests a page the server sends it out.
Now we know where the website is held, so how does the web surfer find a website?
The short answer is: by typing in the URL, or in other words, the web site address. So for example, if you wanted to find the web site http://websitedesigningplus.com, you would type in the address into your web browser’s address bar .
There are other ways to find web sites such as like search engines, social sites, and bookmarking, but all web sites are being found by going to the web site’s official address.
That brings us our next detail: how does a website get an official address so that the rest of the web can find it? You get your official address by registering your domain name.
If you ever wondered what the heck registering a domain was all about it is: registering a domain name gets you an official address for your web site on the World Wide Web. With this ‘official’ address, the rest of the web can find you.
Just like your home address is unique in the real world, there also can’t be any duplicate addresses at all on the Internet, otherwise no one would know where to go and you would end up in the wrong place! In other words, domain names are unique addresses on the web.
Having a unique address on the web does cost money, normally domain name is a small yearly fee and you can register a domain name from 1 to 10 years. The reason for the cost is that the central ‘address book’ of all the world’s domain names needs to be updated – somebody’s got to pay for that!
That leads us to our last bit of information: when you type in a website’s domain name or click on a link that takes you to that domain name, your browser starts asking servers where that particular domain name is sitting (on the web) and the servers are then able to tell the browser where to go by referring to the central address book mentioned above.
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