What Is A Terms Of Service Afor A Website

What is the departure between webpage, website, web server, and search engine?

In this article, nosotros describe diverse web-related concepts: spider web pages, websites, web servers, and search engines. These terms are often confused by newcomers to the web or are incorrectly used. Allow's larn what they each mean!

Summary

As with any area of cognition, the spider web comes with a lot of jargon. Don't worry, we won't overwhelm you with all of information technology (nosotros take a glossary if yous're curious). Notwithstanding, there are a few basic terms you lot need to empathize at the outset, since you'll hear these expressions all the time equally y'all read on. Information technology's piece of cake to confuse these terms sometimes since they refer to related but different functionalities. In fact, you'll sometimes run into these terms misused in news reports and elsewhere, so getting them mixed upwards is understandable!

We'll cover these terms and technologies in more detail as we explore farther, but these quick definitions volition be a great outset for you:

spider web page: A document which can be displayed in a web browser such as Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera, Microsoft Internet Explorer or Edge, or Apple's Safari. These are too often called merely "pages."
website: A collection of spider web pages which are grouped together and usually connected together in diverse ways. Often called a "web site" or a "site."
spider web server: A computer that hosts a website on the Cyberspace.
search engine: A web service that helps you find other spider web pages, such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, or DuckDuckGo. Search engines are usually accessed through a web browser (e.m. you tin perform search engine searches directly in the accost bar of Firefox, Chrome, etc.) or through a web page (e.1000. bing.com or duckduckgo.com).

Let'southward await at a simple analogy — a public library. This is what you would generally do when visiting a library:

Notice a search index and look for the championship of the book you want.
Make a note of the catalog number of the book.
Go to the detail department containing the book, find the right itemize number, and get the volume.

Allow's compare the library with a web server:

The library is like a web server. It has several sections, which is similar to a spider web server hosting multiple websites.
The different sections (science, math, history, etc.) in the library are like websites. Each section is like a unique website (two sections do not contain the same books).
The books in each section are like webpages. 1 website may have several webpages, e.thou., the Science section (the website) will have books on heat, audio, thermodynamics, statics, etc. (the webpages). Webpages can each exist institute at a unique location (URL).
The search alphabetize is like the search engine. Each book has its own unique location in the library (two books cannot be kept at the same identify) which is specified by the catalog number.

Agile learning

Deeper dive

So, permit'southward dig deeper into how those four terms are related and why they are sometimes dislocated with each other.

Web page

A web page is a simple document displayable past a browser. Such documents are written in the HTML language (which nosotros await into in more than detail in other articles). A web page can embed a variety of unlike types of resources such as:

style information — controlling a page's expect-and-feel
scripts — which add interactivity to the page
media — images, sounds, and videos.

Note: Browsers can too display other documents such equally PDF files or images, simply the term web page specifically refers to HTML documents. Otherwise, we only use the term document.

All web pages bachelor on the web are reachable through a unique accost. To access a page, merely type its address in your browser accost bar:

Example of a web page address in the browser address bar

Web site

A website is a collection of linked web pages (plus their associated resources) that share a unique domain name. Each web page of a given website provides explicit links—about of the time in the form of clickable portion of text—that allow the user to move from ane page of the website to another.

To access a website, type its domain name in your browser address bar, and the browser volition display the website'south main web page, or homepage (casually referred as "the home"):

Example of a web site domain name in the browser address bar

The ideas of a web page and a website are peculiarly easy to confuse for a website that contains only one web page. Such a website is sometimes chosen a unmarried-page website.

Spider web server

A spider web server is a computer hosting one or more websites. "Hosting" ways that all the spider web pages and their supporting files are bachelor on that computer. The web server will send any web folio from the website it is hosting to any user'due south browser, per user request.

Don't confuse websites and web servers. For example, if yous hear someone say, "My website is not responding", it actually ways that the spider web server is not responding and therefore the website is not available. More chiefly, since a web server can host multiple websites, the term spider web server is never used to designate a website, every bit it could cause great confusion. In our previous case, if we said, "My web server is not responding", it means that multiple websites on that web server are not bachelor.

Search engine

Search engines are a common source of defoliation on the web. A search engine is a special kind of website that helps users discover web pages from other websites.

There are plenty out there: Google, Bing, Yandex, DuckDuckGo, and many more than. Some are generic, some are specialized about certain topics. Use whichever you adopt.

Many beginners on the web misfile search engines and browsers. Let's make it clear: A browser is a slice of software that retrieves and displays web pages; a search engine is a website that helps people find web pages from other websites. The defoliation arises because, the first time someone launches a browser, the browser displays a search engine's homepage. This makes sense, because, patently, the starting time thing yous want to do with a browser is to find a web page to brandish. Don't confuse the infrastructure (eastward.thousand., the browser) with the service (e.chiliad., the search engine). The distinction will assist you quite a bit, but even some professionals speak loosely, and so don't feel broken-hearted near it.

Here is an case of Firefox showing a Google search box as its default startup page: