How The Web Works

The Basics

All websites reside on a server somewhere in the world. When you browse the web you use a client (your PC running Explorer or Netscape) which requests data from the correct server and then displays it on your screen. On a basic level this is how it works.

A web server is typically nothing different than your home PC, the only difference being that the software running on the PC is setup to serve web pages. Your PC is running browser software like Internet Explorer or Netscape, which converts the web page to what you see on the screen.

Some More Detail

When you type in the URL of a web page, or click on a link that requests the URL of a web page the following events occur. For example when you requested this page http://hostingrelatedguides.hostology.info/how_the_web_works.html

The browser splits the URL into 3 different sections

The protocol (http://)

The name of the server (www.hostology.info)

The name of the file on the server (how_the_web_works.htm)

The browser then sends the server name to a name server to look up the real address of where www.hostology.info resides. The name server translates the name into an IP address and connects to that IP address on the web.

The browser then sends a request for the file (how_the_web_works.htm) and the web server sends back the file over the net to your browser.

Your browser then converts the HTML web page to what you see on the screen.

When You Want To Have Your Own Website You Need

Some space on a web server (this is what a web hosting account is)

You need a domain name (like www.yournewsite.com) to point to the server

And of course you need to create your website to place on the server
Static Web Pages vs. Dynamic Pages

Your web browser converts HTML to the pages you see on the page. HTML is not a programming language, it is just a way to format information. Browsers can also understand Javascript which allows your web page to do some extra things. Javascript is sent as part of the page and is run in the browser.

If you want a page that contains dynamic information (fed by a database) then the web server has to add this to the web page before it sends it to the client (the client is your web browser).
This is achieved by using server side scripting like PHP or ASP code. This code gets written into the web page and the web server runs the code and sends the output as HTML to the browser together with the other HTML in the web page.