What is a Website?

Later that day, Aria and I sat down for her first lesson on how to create her first ever website.

This question may seem like it has an obvious answer. After all, we use websites every day. But this is actually a (surprisingly) sensible question from Aria. If you are going to create something, it’s handy to know what it actually is that you are creating!

Well, a website is a collection of content such as words, images, videos or games, saved as files which anyone with an internet connection can access to view or use. Websites are made from many webpages and each page contains its own content.

Individual Cat Food Sachets In A Box Like Individual Pages On A Website

Just like how cat food comes in a box which contains lots of individual sachets of food. A website is like the box of cat food, it contains stuff like words and images, but all of that is contained in individual files or webpages, like the food is contained in individual sachets.

Another way to think of it is like a book. Each page of a book is filled with words or pictures, much like web pages in a website. While using a website, on a phone or a tablet or a laptop, you can move from webpage to webpage using links, which is like turning pages in our website book and each webpage is made of one or a combination of files.

A library book will have a correct place on the shelf and a website will have an address. You need the address of a website to access all of the web pages it contains and normally the website address takes to you to the home page, which is like a book's contents or title page.

A website's address is also called its domain or domain name. For this website that is codingforcats.com and all of the web pages of this website fall under this domain, just like chapters or pages of a book are all within their book.

Pages Make Up a Book Like Web Pages Make Up A Website

All of the images and words you see now are part of this web page which is part of the coding for cats website. It is the digital equivalent of reading Chapter 1 of 'Cooking Treats For Your Cat'.