A
website (also spelled
Web site[1][2]) is a collection of related
web pages,
images,
videos or other digital assets that are addressed relative to a common
Uniform Resource Locator (URL), often consisting of only the domain name (or, in rare cases, the
IP address) and the root path ('/') in an
Internet Protocol-based network. A web site is hosted on at least one
web server, accessible via a network such as the
Internet or a private
local area network.
A web page is a
document, typically written in
plain text interspersed with formatting instructions of
Hypertext Markup Language (HTML,
XHTML). A web page may incorporate elements from other websites with suitable
markup anchors.
Web pages are accessed and transported with the
Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), which may optionally employ encryption (
HTTP Secure, HTTPS) to provide security and privacy for the user of the web page content. The user's application, often a
web browser, renders the page content according to its HTML markup instructions onto a
display terminal.
All publicly accessible websites collectively constitute the
World Wide Web.
The pages of a website can usually be accessed from a simple Uniform Resource Locator (URL) called the
homepage. The URLs of the pages organize them into a hierarchy, although
hyperlinking between them conveys the reader's perceived
site structure and guides the reader's navigation of the site.
Some websites require a
subscription to access some or all of their content. Examples of subscription websites include many business sites, parts of
news websites,
academic journal websites, gaming websites,
message boards, web-based
e-mail,
social networking websites, websites providing real-time
stock market data, and websites providing various other services (e.g. websites offering storing and/or sharing of images, files and so forth).
