NOTE – ABOUT THE INTERNET

WHAT IS THE INTERNET?

The internet is a worldwide network that is made up of many networks.

WHAT IS THE WORLD WIDE WEB?

The WWW is the entire group of webpages that are available on the internet. It is often defined as “a system of interconnected web pages”. However, not all web pages are necessarily interconnected.

WHERE ARE WEBPAGES?

Webpages that work on the internet are stored on computers that contain a special program called a webserver. This program is contacted by your web browser when you want to see a web page.

The webserver is responsible for sending the webpage and any other needed file to the web browser. In some cases, the webserver also runs small programs (called server-side scripts) before sending the webpage.

An example of a webpage with a server-side script is a banking website. Once you provide your login information, the webpage has a script that checks your information and if it is correct, it sends your banking information to you.

WEBSERVER SOFTWARE

Just like there are different programs that allow you to do word processing (Word, Wordperfect, Works, ...), there are different programs that can be webservers. The two most popular webservers by far are Apache and Microsoft’s IIS.

TERMINOLOGY RELATED TO SCRIPTS

You can add complexe programs into your webpages. These small programs are called scripts.

Scripts are created using a programming language (or scripting language). The most popular web programming languages are:

· Javascript

· VBscript

· ASP

· PHP

There are entire books written for each language. Learning one in class takes several weeks of work. While we won’t have time to learn this, we will see how to use existing scripts that are freely available online.