What's A Website?

The web is a network of machines. 

Anyone can access it by using a web browser like Firefox, Chrome, or Safari.

When we want to access a document on the web, we use its web address known as URL (Uniform Resource Locator). Each URL corresponds to a specific document: a picture, a video, a PDF file, or a web page, among others.

A URL like https://cowriters.app/search?query=internet is divided into four parts: a communication protocol called HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure), a domain name (cowriters.app), a path (/search), and some parameters (query=internet).

When you type a URL in your browser’s search bar, you are requesting a web document from a machine called a web server.

HTTPS is the protocol used to communicate with this web server.

The domain name allows us to find the network where the web server is located, by using another type of machine called Domain Name Servers. Those domain name servers are able to translate domain names into Internet Protocol addresses (IP address), which allows us to identify any machine on the web.

Once we reach the web server, it will use the path and parameters in our HTTP request to find a corresponding web document. This web document is then sent back to us. Internet browsers can read those documents and display them to us in a way we can read them too.

A website is simply a directory located in a web server containing web documents.