What is Website? A Complete Guide

A Website is a related collection of World Wide Web (WWW) files that includes a beginning file called a home page. A company or an individual tells you how to get to their Web site by giving you the address of their home page. 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. (The home page address actually includes a specific file name like index.html but, as in IBM’s case, when a standard default name is set up, users don’t have to enter the file name.) IBM’s home page address leads to thousands of pages. (But a Web site can also be just a few pages.) 

Since a site implies a geographic place, a Web site can be confused with a Web server. A server is a computer that holds the files for one or more sites. A very large Web site may be spread over a number of servers in different geographic locations. IBM is a good example; its Web site consists of thousands of files spread out over many servers in world-wide locations. 

Overview 

Websites have many functions and can be used in various fashions; a website can be a personal website, a commercial website, a government website or a non-profit organization website. 

Websites can be the work of an individual, a business or other organization, and are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose. Web pages can be viewed or 

otherwise accessed from a range of computer-based and Internet-enabled devices of various sizes, including desktop computers, laptops, tablet computers and smartphones. A website is hosted on a computer system known as a web server, also called an HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol) server. These terms can also refer to the software that runs on these systems which retrieves and delivers the web pages in response to requests from the website’s users. Apache is the most commonly used web server software (according to Netcraft statistics) and Microsoft’s. 

STATIC WEBSITE 

A static website is one that has web pages stored on the server in the format that is sent to a client web browser. It is primarily coded in Hypertext Markup Language (HTML); Cascading. Style Sheets (CSS) are used to control appearance beyond basic HTML. Images are commonly used to effect the desired appearance and as part of the main content. Audio or video might also be considered “static” content if it plays automatically or is generally non-interactive. This type of website usually displays the same information to all visitors. Similar to handing out a printed brochure to customers or clients, a static website will generally provide consistent, standard information for an extended period of time. Although the website owner may make updates periodically, it is a manual process to edit the text, photos and other content and may require basic website design skills and software. Simple forms or marketing examples of websites, such as classic websites, a five-page website or a brochure website are often static websites, because they present pre-defined, static information to the user. This may include

information about a company and its products and services through text, photos, animations, audio/video, and navigation menus. 

Dynamic website 

A dynamic website is one that changes or customizes itself frequently and automatically. Server side dynamic pages are generated “on the fly” by computer code that produces the HTML (CSS are responsible for appearance and thus, are static files). There are a wide range of software systems, such as CGI, Java Servlets and Java Server Pages (JSP), Active Server Pages and ColdFusion (CFML) that is available to generate dynamic web systems and dynamic sites. Various web application frameworks and web template systems are available for general-use programming languages like Perl, PHP, Python and Ruby to make it faster and easier to create complex dynamic websites. A site can display the current state of a dialogue between users, monitor a changing situation, or provide information in some way personalized to the requirements of the individual user. For example, when the front page of a news site is requested, the code running on the web server might combine stored HTML fragments with news stories retrieved from a database or another website via RSS to produce a page that includes the latest information. Dynamic sites can be interactive by using HTML forms, storing and reading back browser cookies, or by creating a series of pages that reflect the previous history of clicks. Another example of dynamic content is when a retail website with a database of media products allows a user to input a search request, e.g. for the keyword Beatles. In response, the content of the web page will spontaneously change the way it looked before, and will then display a list of Beatles products like CDs, DVDs and books. Dynamic HTML uses JavaScript code to instruct the web browser how to interactively modify the page contents. One way to simulate a certain type of dynamic website while avoiding the performance loss of initiating the dynamic engine on a per-user or per-connection basis, is to periodically automatically regenerate a large series of static pages. 

What are the various types of websites? 

Originally, websites were purely informational. Before the web was opened to the public, educational and research institutions and government agencies were able to make information available to each other via text-only websites. Now that we have the World Wide Web, there are more types of websites than you can shake a stick at. Here we will discuss the basic types, noting that we will not include all and that there are hybrids of all those we will discuss. 

Basic Website Types 

1. Personal Websites 
2. Photo Sharing Websites 
3. Writers/Authors Websites 
4. Community Building Websites 
5. Mobile Device Websites
6. Blogs 
7. Informational Websites 
8. Online Business. 

Brochure/Catalog 

9. Directory Websites 
10. E-commerce Websites 

The first three have very little to do with Small Business, 

so we will speed through them. Numbers three, four, and 

Five can be very helpful to small businesses. The last 

three are essential to small business. 

1. Personal Website 

Your Internet Service Provider or Domain Registrar may offer you free server space for you to create your own website that might include some family photos and an online diary. Usually these will have a web address (URL) looking something like this: www.your-isp.com/-your user-name/. This type of site is useful for a family, teenagers, grandparents, etc. to stay in touch with each other. This type is not advisable for a small business because the URL is not search engine friendly and the limited server capabilities your hosting company offer may not be sophisticated enough for a small business website. 

2. Photo Sharing Websites 

These types of websites are cropping up like fleas on dogs. There are web sites like, Flickr.com, Photosite.com, and Google’s Picasa. There could easily be over a hundred such sites that offer free photo sharing paid for by their online advertising. Also, many digital cameras and photo printers now come with software enabling mere mortals to create digital photo slide shows and upload them to the web. Most smartphones have apps to accomplish the same ends. 

3. Writers/Authors websites 

writer’s and Author’s websites are part of what’s known as the Writer’s or Author’s Platform in the publishing business. The platform includes, a website, a Facebook presence, blog, Twitter account, and the old fashioned mailing list. Many publishers will ask a prospective client about 

their platform. In other words, “If we publish your book, what sort of a reader base do you already have that we can count on to buy your new publication?” Fairly weighty request, wouldn’t you say? For now, let’s concentrate on the website part. A writers website would include a biography, a catalog of published books and works, perhaps excerpts from some works, links to publications on sites like Amazon.com, a link to the writer’s blog, reviews and comments on the author’s publications. You get the idea, and that is to build a following, a fan base to which future publications can be directly marketed. 

4. Community Building Websites

Social Websites, Forum Websites, and Sharing Websites. These websites build online communities of people who want to interact with other people socially or meet people who

share their interests. The best known website of this type is probably FaceBook.com. There’s also Linkedin.com, and let’s not forget the old MySpace.com just to mention a few. For sharing and discussing mutual interests, there are online forums for practically any subject you can think of. These Forum websites can be a great source of information and help for the small business person. (I’m sure there is a forum dedicated to your type of business. Just do a web search for something like a real estate web forum.) Now you can see this is where we start to get into the idea of “hybrid” sites. Photo Sharing and other forms of sharing sites might also be considered community building sites, much as Blogging sites are. Can Dating Sites be considered Community Building Sites, or are they E-commerce Sites All that’s up for discussion. 

5. Mobile Device Websites

The use of mobile devices (smart phones, tablets, watches, etc.) has become ubiquitous. One problem is that standard websites are difficult to view and sometimes take a long time to download on some of these devices with their small screens and wireless connections. Websites whose pages are narrower in width and take up less bandwidth work much better for mobile devices. A new domain designation has been created to identify websites that are “mobile friendly”. That is .mobi, as in www.xislegraphix.mobi, if I had such a site. If you have a small business that would benefit from being viewed on a mobile device, you should consider investigating the possibilities of creating a mobile friendly site. 

6. Blogging Websites

People took the words Web Logs and shortened it to Blogs-online diaries, journals, or editorials, if you will. My, how Blogs have taken over the Internet. A person used to be outdated if he/she did not have a website, now having a blog is de rigeur. A blog owner will log-on daily, weekly, or whenever, and write about whatever is going on in their lives or business, or they may comment on politics and news. How wonderful the Internet is! Now anyone who can afford a blog can be self published and allow their thoughts to be read by anyone in the world who has online access. How important is blogging to the small business person? 

7. Informational Websites

A major informational site is wikipedia.org, the online encyclopedia. And it is unique, because it allows members to contribute and edit articles. Now your small business may not want such a comprehensive site, but if you have information to share or sell, an informational website would fill the bill. Suppose you have a landscaping business. You could create a website that lists plants with their definitions and planting and caring instructions. This would be helpful to people, and you would use it to lead people to your nursery. Of course you could “hybrid” this site by adding an e-commerce feature, a forum, or even photo sharing.

8. Online Business Brochure/Catalog Websites

In the days before the Internet, we used the print, radio, and television media to spread the word about our businesses. Now we can cast a large net, reaching literally millions of people all over the world with just one website. With your online brochure or catalog, you can show anyone who looks for and finds your website, photos and descriptions of your products or services. To some this may sound like an E-commerce Website, but there are many businesses that deal in products or services that are not sellable over the web-think hair-stylist, dentist, or day-care center. 

9. Directory Websites

Just as we used to use the printed Yellow Pages in phone books to find services and businesses, today we have website directories. The Yellow Pages has one, YP.com. Directories can be dedicated to a certain topic or industry, or they can encompass geographical areas. Search Engines, such as Google.com and Yahoo.com can be considered directories, but since their databases are so large, rather than searching alphabetically, one enters a search term in the search field. 

10. E-commerce Websites

Ever hear of Amazon.com? It’s one of the grand-daddies of all e-commerce websites. But you don’t have to be an Amazon to sell your products online. There are millions of small businesses who use their e-commerce websites to sell their products over the Internet. Just about anything that can be sold in a brick-and-mortar store can be sold online-with much less overhead!