Web sites

A website, or simply site, is a set of web pages and resources linked by hyperlinks, defined and accessible by a web address. A site is developed using web programming languages, then hosted on a web server accessible via the global Internet network, a local intranet, or any other network, such as the Tor network. All public websites constitute the World Wide Web.

In about 30 years (from 1992 to 2023), the number of websites online has grown from 10 to more than 1.88 billion, listed by search engines according to Netcraft and the Worldometer algorithm. And an indeterminate number of unlisted sites exist4, not indexed by search engines (dark web…); but in 2022, 75% were considered inactive (temporarily or not) or were “parked domain names”. GAFAM and in particular Google, YouTube and Facebook are the most consulted (e.g.: several tens of billions of visits in May 2023, according to SimilarWeb).

History

(Screenshot of the World Wide Web browser)

The World Wide Web (WWW) was created in 1989 by the English engineer at CERN, Tim Berners-Lee. The web was essentially designed to automatically share information between scientists, universities and institutes around the world. info.cern.ch was the first website to go online, running on a NeXT computer at CERN. This site is still accessible via the Internet.

Before the introduction of HTML and HTTP, other protocols such as FTP and Gopher were used to obtain files from a server. These protocols offered a hierarchical organization of directories in which the user navigated and chose the files to download. In 1992, there were only 10 websites online. About 30 years later, on June 12, 2023, there were more than 1.88 billion listed by search engines, according to Netcraft and the Worldometer algorithm, and an undetermined number not listed (dark web…); but 75% were considered inactive (temporarily or not) or were “parked domain names”. In the early 2020s, Google, YouTube and Facebook were the most visited (e.g.: several tens of billions of visits in May 2023, according to SimilarWeb).

Definition

A website is a set of web pages that can be consulted by following hyperlinks within the site.

The web address of a site actually corresponds to the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) of a web page intended to be the first consulted: the home page. Browsing the pages of a site is called a “visit”, because hyperlinks should allow you to consult all the pages of the site without leaving it (without having to consult a web page outside the site). A visit can start with any page, especially when its URL is given by a search engine. Technically, nothing distinguishes the home page from any other page. Web pages are written in a computer language designed to contain hyperlinks, HTML (Hypertext Markup Language).

We sometimes speak of “Internet site” by metonymy, instead of website. We should speak of a website intended for the Internet, but by abuse of language, the expression Internet site is often still used. Websites are not necessarily accessible via the Internet. For example, intranets can contain one or more websites not accessible via the Internet.

Today, we consider that the World Wide Web (the Web) is made up of all the websites online on the Internet. The client-server protocol HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) is used for communications between web servers hosting websites, and HTTP client software such as web browsers and indexing robots.

(Includes texts translated and adapted from Wikipedia by Nicolae Sfetcu)