Understanding How Websites Work – Part 1
Before you embark on any journey that is related to building a website there are a few things you need to know and understand.
First things first. A basic website that uses no database to store content but has text and or images is made using HTML code. The code in the webpage is converted to a viewable webpage via the visitors web browser. The way this all works is as follows.
Step 1 – Fully designed webpage resides on a server until its called to perform its duty via a web browser.
Step 2 – A person sitting on an internet connected computer decides to visit the webpage either via link or search result.
Step 3 – As the link is pressed by a mouse click the web page is activated and in an instant your web browser converts the html code to the designed web page.
HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language. This type of webpage or website is refereed to as client side and even though the internet was around since the 60′s it did not take off till the 90′s due to the creation of the web browser. The html code is hidden inside the web page code itself.
Below is a sample webpage which is coded to show the result Hello.
Each main tag needs an opening and closing tag eg <html> </html>.
So the 3 main tags in this example are:
1. html – This is the tag that is used overall for the webpage.
2. head – In this section you can place the title of a webpage and other stuff like meta tags etc.
3. Body – In this section its where the content of your webpage is stored.
So something like below:
<html>
<head>
<title>Hello</title>
</head>
<body bgcolor=”white” text=”black” link=”blue” vlink=”purple” alink=”red”>
<p>Hello</p>
</body>
</html>
Is converted to:
Hello – by your web browser.
Question: Do you need to fully memorize all of this code? NO. Many web editors will create this code for you.