What is a Website?....Answer. A Website is simply a Main Folder on an Internet (Worldwide) Computer. Within the main folder there may be files and sub-folders, just like on your computer. The main folder is normally named after the domain name. For example. My domain name is yoingco, so my main folder's name is also called yoingco. It contains my webpages and a sub-folder containing their pictures.

A file within the main folder or within its sub-folder(s), ending with the file name extension .htm or .html, is called a Web (Information) Page. It is a file that normally contains Internet Instructions (codes), Pictures, Text (the Information itself) and Links but can also contain Video, Music and Animation.

Inside each folder, main folder or sub-folder, there has to be a file (webpage) called index.htm or index.html. It is called the Index Webpage because it is supposed to index all the other webpages (files) within its folder, and because it is the first webpage (file) that a Web Browser (such as Internet Explorer) looks for. For example. If you type www.yoingco.com into internet explorer's Address Bar edit box it will look for the index.htm webpage (file) within the yoingco main folder.

A website address is normally the full domain name. For example. My full domain name is www.yoingco.com. So when someone asks me "What is your Website Address" I reply with "www.yoingco.com". Strictly speaking though, a website address does not have to end with .com. It can end with .net, .co.uk, .biz and so on. A website address, just like a house address, tells you where to find something. For example. My house address tells everyone where I live, the same as www.yoingco.com tells everyone where my Free Computer Lessons are.

An URL is just another way of saying Path Name. For example. When you want to view a webpage from within the main folder, but not the index webpage, you type its URL (pathname) into internet explorer's Address Bar edit box. So if you wanted to view the WINDOWS webpage that is on this website you could type the web address www.yoingco.com into internet explorer's Address Bar edit box, click on the INDEX link and then on the WINDOWS links. Or you could just type in its URL www.yoingco.com/windows_vista.htm. With web addresses and URLs the forward slash / is used instead of Pathnames back slash \.

To view a webpage (file) from a particular website (main folder) you use a program called a Web (Internet) Browser. The 3 common web browsers are Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera. You type a web address (i.e www.yoingco.com) or URL (i.e www.yoingco.com/windows_vista.htm) into the web browser's address bar edit box (address box) and then click on its GO button. The web browser then asks your ISP's computer to make an Extended Internet Connection to the Internet (Worldwide) Computer that contains the website (main folder) storing the webpage you want to view. Because each website address is unique, just as a house address is unique, your ISP knows how to find the internet (worldwide) computer. It does its magic of turning the website address into a unique telephone number. Once the extended internet connection to the internet (worldwide) computer is made the web browser (internet explorer) can then start reading (downloading/fetching) the index webpage (or the URL webpage) before displaying its content (information, pictures and so on).

The reason why I have explained the connections (main and extended) to you is because many people do not fully understand how the internet, as a whole, works. For example. They do not understand when you say "The Server Is Down" and so on.

A server is just a master computer. Your ISP's computer is a server for example because it is serving the needs of your computer. It stores sent and received data on its hard drive so it can check that data for viruses before putting the data on to your computer (clean) or on to another computer (clean). Your ISP's computer also acts as a storage place for your emails, website and so on. If someone sends you an email with their Hotmail account, the Hotmail computer is a server to the person who sent you the email. Hotmail sends their email to your ISP's computer.

Your computer is known as a Client computer because you are the client (customer). When your ISP's computer cannot make an extended internet connection to a server computer, such as the Hotmail server (to check your email), you say "The Hotmail Server Is Down" because no extended internet connection could be made to it. In the case of Hotmail, who have millions of client computers (extended internet connections) to serve, sometimes their server (master computer) will shutdown. Wouldn't you fall down with tired legs if you had to serve a few million customers in 1 day.

Your computer can change from a client computer to a server computer. For example. If you set-up a wireless or cable network you can set it up so that your computer is the master computer - the server. So at the end of the day a server is just a computer that takes control of everything, which means it has to be clever and powerful.

A home page is the webpage that you first see when your web browser starts. For example. If the home page is set to www.google.com, every time you open a new Internet Explorer the first webpage it will display is the Index webpage from the Google website - downloaded (fetched) when it made an extended internet connection to the Google website (www.google.com).

The home page does not have to be a website. It could be an URL. For example. The home page could be set to www.bbc.co.uk/bbctwo/ if you wanted the BBC2 webpage as the first webpage to display when internet explorer starts. In this case the extended internet connection would be to the sub-folder called bbctwo of the main folder (website) called bbc. The webpage that would be displayed (not specified in the URL) is the index webpage inside the bbctwo sub-folder. Because the bbctwo sub-folder was the last folder to be named in the URL it is set to the current folder. And because no webpage was given in the URL (i.e. television.htm) the default (standard/normal) webpage is used instead, which is always the index webpage. Hence why every folder (main and sub-folder) must have an index webpage inside them. If the index webpage does not exist you normally get an error webpage displayed instead (i.e. Page Not Found) or you are able to see the contents (sub-folders and files) of that, un-indexed, folder.

Microsoft product screen shot(s) reprinted with permission from Microsoft Corporation.  As stated here by the Microsoft Corporation.

All HTM files in the yoingco.com folder and its sub-folders are (c) John White, August 3rd 2005 - 2008. All Rights Reserved.    FREE Vista Helpline: Contact John