The internet plays an important role in modern society. Billions of people around the world use it for a wide variety of reasons, from shopping and reading news to keeping in touch with friends and watching television. There are still many, though, who are beginners when it comes to the internet. This article looks at the basics of the internet, and explains some of the main terms that those new to the internet may come across.

The internet is a set of web pages; basically pages that people can view through the internet. A website is a series of web pages that are connected, and a website visitor can click the links which takes them to other pages on the site. Often websites will also link to other websites that are related, or likely to be of interest to their visitors. Anyone can publish a webpage on the internet if they know how to and it can be read by anyone with internet access, wherever they are across the globe.

Web Browsers

A web browser is used to access the internet, with Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome examples of browsers. It is basically a program used to gain internet access. If you are on the internet, you will be using a web browser. The icon you click on to start the internet opens the web browser, and the window that appears is the browser.

Search Engines

The best known and most widely used search engine is Google, with Yahoo and Bing other popular ones. Internet users use a search engine when they want to search for something online. For example, if someone goes online to find a divorce solicitors firm in London, they may turn to a search engine and type in, ‘Divorce Solicitors London’. This will then return a list of results consisting of divorce solicitors that are based in London. Most, if not all internet users will use a search engine at some point. If someone is looking for a particular type of website but not a specific website then they are likely to use a search engine. They could be looking to shop online, looking for information, searching for car insurance, searching for news related to a particular subject, or looking for professional service. To search for all of these, and much more, people use search engines.

Email

Email (sometimes written e-mail) stands for electronic mail. People use email to communicate with each other. In some ways it is like sending an electronic letter to someone with the recipient receiving it almost instantaneously. The same email can be sent to several recipients all at once. To send an email you need an email account (there are free ones available). An email will be sent to the recipient’s own email account and when they access the account your email will be there. Email is the most widely used communications tool in business these days. They can be drafted quickly and sent and received in a matter of seconds.

Web Address or URL

A URL (Uniform Resource Locator) means a website address. An example of a web address is ‘http://www.yourwebsite.com/’. But where does each part of the address come from? The ‘http’ identifies the address as a web address so a computer knows it is a web address. ‘www’ stand for world wide web, another term used to describe the internet. The ‘yourwebsite’ part of the above example is chosen by the website owner and for businesses or organisations is usually the name of the business or organisation. For example the BBC uses ‘bbc’ and Google uses ‘google’ for this part of their website. The final part of the URL (.com in the example) can distinguish the country the website is based in. For example .co.uk means it is from the UK, .de from Germany and .com.au from Australia. In theory ‘.com’ means it is from the United States but it can also be used for websites in other countries, and is especially used for those targeting an international audience. There are also other options for the final part of a web address, including .edu (for educational sites), .gov (government sites) and .org (organisations). It is not possible to have an identical URL to someone else, although if someone has ‘yourwebsite.com’, you could have ‘yourwebsite.co.uk’.

Web Hosting

For a website to be viewed by others it must be published online. It must be hosted on a web server, referred to as Web Hosting. Web hosting companies are usually used for this. In exchange for a fee they will host a website on their server, meaning the world is able to view it. There is a wide array of hosting options, from very cheap, or even free hosting, to very advanced hosting that is significantly more expensive. The hosting required depends on the type of website with some needing more advanced hosting than other. The type of web hosting required is dependent on the content of the website and the number of visitors it has.

Andrew Marshall (c)