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Glossary of web terms

A domain name locates an organization or other entity on the Internet. For example, the domain name www.totalbaseball.com locates an Internet address for "totalbaseball.com" at Internet point 199.0.0.2 and a particular host server named "www". The "com" part of the domain name reflects the purpose of the organization or entity (in this example, "commercial") and is called the top-level domain name. The "totalbaseball" part of the domain name defines the organization or entity and together with the top-level is called the second-level domain name. The second-level domain name maps to and can be thought of as the "readable" version of the Internet address.

For a web user, the home page is the first web page that is displayed after starting a web browser like Netscape's Navigator or Microsoft's Internet Explorer. The browser is usually preset so that the home page is the first page of the browser manufacturer. However, you can set it to open to any web site. For example, you can specify that "http://www.yahoo.com" or "http://whatis.com" be your home page. You can also specify that there be no home page (a blank space will be displayed) in which case you choose the first page from your bookmark list or enter a web address. A home page is also the first page presented when a user selects a site or presence on the World Wide Web.

Until recently, InterNIC (Internet Network Information Center), a cooperative activity between the U.S. government and Network Solutions, Inc., was the organization responsible for registering and maintaining the com, net, and org top-level domain names on the World Wide Web. The actual registration was performed by Network Solutions, Inc. As a result of a new U. S. Government Statement of Policy (known as "the white paper") in October, 1998, competition will be introduced in domain name registration for these top-level domains and a new, non-profit global organization, the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), has been designated to conduct the registrar accreditation process. ICANN has initially designated five new registrar companies - in addition to Network Solutions - for a two-month test period. After that period, additional registrars are expected to be accredited.
If you are creating or already have a web site for which you would like to have your own domain name, you must register the domain name through one of the registrars. The current registration fee through NSI is $70 for the first two years and $35 a year thereafter. You can usually fill out the registration application through your server space provider (or a provider that you are considering using if you don't have a web site yet). The space provider may add a small additional charge for this service.

An IP Address is an identifier for a computer or device on a TCP/IP network. Networks using the TCP/IP protocol route messages based on the IP address of the destination. The format of an IP address is a 32-bit numeric address written as four numbers separated by periods. Each number can be zero to 255. For example, 1.160.10.240 could be an IP address. Within an isolated network, you can assign IP addresses at random as long as each one is unique. However, connecting a private network to the Internet requires using registered IP addresses (called Internet addresses) to avoid duplicates. The four numbers in an IP address are used in different ways to identify a particular network and a host on that network. The InterNIC Registration Service assigns Internet addresses from the following three classes:

  • Class A - supports 16 million hosts on each of 127 networks
  • Class B - supports 65,000 hosts on each of 16,000 networks
  • Class C - supports 254 hosts on each of 2 million networks

Web hosts are businesses, consultants, Internet service providers, or firms who rent storage space for electronic documents and data on their servers or computers. These computers/ servers are connected for Internet access 24 hours a day for continuous uploading and downloading of data. Web hosts set up a virtual domain or home for your web pages. If you have your own server that is connected to the Internet, then you have your own web host, or at least the basic necessities for setting one up.

A web page is simply a file (or files) that contain instructions for how the page is displayed and reacts to user input (a mouse click for example). The technical term for this type of programming is Hyper Text Markup Language or HTML. Most web pages are written in HTML. Web pages can contain text, graphics and links to other web pages and sites (collection of web pages). Some web pages even contain sound, video and other eye catching objects.

A web server is a computer that delivers (serves up) Web pages. Every web server has an IP address and possibly a domain name. For example, if you enter the URL http://www.shermanhill.org/index.html in your browser, this sends a request to the server whose domain name is shermanhill.org. The server then fetches the page named index.html and sends it to your browser.

A web site is a collection of files on a particular subject that includes a beginning file called a home page. For example, most companies, organizations, or individuals that have web sites have a single address that they give you. This is their home page address. From the home page, you can get to all the other pages on their site. For example, the web site for IBM has the home page address of http://www.ibm.com. (In this case, the actual file name of the home page file doesn't have to be included because IBM has named this file index.html and told the server that this address really means http://www.ibm.com/index.html.)
A synonym and less frequently used term for web site is "web presence." That term seems to better express the idea that a site is not tied to specific geographic location, but is "somewhere in cyberspace." However, "web site" seems to be used much more frequently.