Have you ever wondered how websites work? In this article, we'll summarize the basics of how websites work, with a special focus on web servers and domain names, their importance, and how to find everything you need to get started.
But we will not go into the technical and technical part, this is a promise.
What are the basics of website work?
First let's agree that a website is the headquarters of your online business, where potential customers can learn about your business and the services you provide to them.
For example, the first thing you do when you decide to open a sweet shop is to rent a place.
The same applies to the website, but the only difference is that you will not rent a place in the real world, but rather space in the web server.
There are many services that take care of this automatically.
We will now give an overview of this topic in order to have a basic idea of what is going on behind the scenes.
Well, time to share some technical information with you.
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What is a web server?
First of all, what is a web server? It is a computer connected to the Internet and containing programming that allows it to store or host the parts of your website: the code, images, videos, and other elements that the website may contain.
This device was called a “server” because it serves the right content as soon as it is requested, such as when someone wants to see a page from your site, for example.
There are plenty of companies that rent out web server space and host websites, just like traditional stores - they pay the hosting fee up front which is more or less the same as the rent.
These companies are responsible for taking care of the technical aspects of running the web server, so you don't need to do it yourself.
Each web server in the world has its own address, or the so-called Internet Protocol "IP" address, which consists of a long numeric sequence, which means that any device connected to the Internet can connect to the web server and access its private address.
Fortunately, we will not go into more technical details, but all you need to know is how to choose a good name to refer to this digital “IP” address.
This leads us to the second part of this article, which is the website address or what is known as “Domain Name”.
What is a domain name?
To define a 'domain name', let's go back to the example of a sweet shop. In your opinion, how would passers-by on the street find the shop? across the banner above, right? Your domain name is not much different, it is how potential customers will find you, which is what you type in the address bar of your browser to access any website, such as "www.google.com" or "www.your business name.com."
In other words, everything after “www dot” is the so-called “domain name”, that is, the part that allows people to find your website, and therefore it is very important.
Summary: Any device that searches for this address, be it a tablet, smartphone, or PC, has to connect to a web server to access the requested website.
When you type the 'domain name', the server sends all the correct parts that the device needs to show the website, such as images and code, so any device can open websites and pages.
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How to find everything you need to get started
So, what happens when someone types your website address into the browser? Let's explain it in a simple scenario:
First, the browser detects which web server contains the content of the site, and goes directly to it to request access to all the elements it needs to display that web page.
Then, the web server sends all parts of your website in terms of images, text, and additional files. Once the browser puts all these parts together, a person can see your entire web page.
This is largely what happens between the server and the browser every time, but using a complex language consisting of the smallest computer unit known as “bit” and the computer information unit known as “byte”.
Summary
The decision to build a website for your business starts with understanding how all of these elements work together: a web server that hosts your site, and a domain name that helps the user find you.