Understanding the Purpose of a Website
A website (also known as a web site) is a collection of interlinked Web pages, accessible through the World Wide Web and Internet, that share a domain name. Websites may offer a variety of information or services, and are typically organized around a home page that links to other pages within the site and outside of it.
A website is a public face for your company, organization, or brand online. As such, it is important to understand the purpose of your website before investing time and money into its development. This will help you create a strategy that aligns with your goals, and ensures your website is meeting its intended purpose.
Getting clear on the purpose of your website will give you a guideline to follow as you begin developing the design and content. It will also allow you to set clear goals for your website that you can measure and compare against its performance.
A site is a collection of Web pages grouped under a common domain name and identified by a uniform resource locator (URL). It is hosted on one or more Web servers and serves files via the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP). Websites are created using a combination of Web scripting languages, such as Perl, Java and PHP, to develop textual, graphic and audio/video contents. Some websites are static while others use a combination of dynamic and static pages to serve different information to visitors.
Websites can be easily accessed by anyone who is connected to the Internet. They can range in size and scope, from small personal websites to massive commercial or government sites. Almost any type of information can be posted to a website, including texts, photos, video and other multimedia, as well as links to other websites or pages.
The first website was built by Tim Berners-Lee, a British physicist at CERN, in 1990. It was the first publicly accessible website and introduced a standard for Web documents, called HTML. Since then, many other document formats have been developed and can be embedded into a website in addition to HTML.
A website is a group of Web pages that share a domain name and are hosted on a single server. Websites can include a wide variety of information, from simple to complex, and may be presented in various ways, such as an index, table of contents, or navigation menu. Typical files found at a website are HTML documents with associated graphic images, scripts and other resources. Websites are accessed by a Web browser, such as Explorer, Firefox or Safari, that requests the Web server to send the required file(s).
When you type a URL into your browser’s search bar, it will display the homepage of the desired website. Most websites have a navigation structure that includes hyperlinks, or tags, that link to other pages on the website. These hyperlinks are called navigation elements and are the main way people find their way around a website. A website also has a footer that contains links to other pages like privacy and disclaimer pages.