A website is a collection of related webpages, such as multimedia content, typically identified using a common domain, and published on a minimum of one web server.
A website may be accessible through a public Web Protocol (IP) network, like the Web, or even a personal local area network (LAN), by referencing a uniform resource locator (URL) that defines the site.
Websites may have many purposes and may be utilised in various styles; a site can be a personal website, a corporate website for a company, a government website, an organization site, etc.. Websites are typically dedicated to a particular subject or purpose, ranging from entertainment and social media to providing news and education. All publicly available websites collectively constitute the World Wide Web, while private websites, such as a company’s site for its own employees, are typically a portion of an intranet.
Web pages, which would be the building blocks of websites, are documents, generally written in plain text interspersed with formatting directions of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML, XHTML). They may include elements from other sites with suitable markup anchors. Web pages are accessed and transported using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), which may optionally apply encryption (HTTP Secure, HTTPS) to provide security and privacy for the user. The user’s program, many times a web browser, renders the page content based on its HTML markup instructions onto a screen terminal.
Hyperlinking between web pages conveys to the reader the site architecture and guides the navigation of the site, which often starts with a home page comprising a directory of the website content. Some sites require user registration or subscription to access content. Cases of subscription websites comprise many business sites, news sites, academic journal websites, gaming sites, file-sharing sites, message boards, online email, social networking websites, websites providing real-time stock exchange information, in addition to websites providing other services. As of 2018, end users can get websites on a range of devices, including desktop and laptop computers, tablet computers, tablets and smart TVs.
