Getting Started

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FAQ   Home

1. What is the internet?
2. World Wide Web
3. HTTP Protocol
4. Accessing your site on the web

What is the internet?

In its simplest terms, the Internet is a network of networks built upon a common set of protocols that allow computers across the planet to communicate. The World Wide Web (WWW or Web) is a "hyperlinked" communications service that piggy-backs on top of the Internet's communications technology (TCP/IP). It is composed of countless hyperlinked graphical Web pages that host a wide range of text, image, audio, and video media.

"Hyperlinks" are a way of actively linking documents (and other files) to other documents on other computers across the Internet, such as this link which brings you to the Post Office Analogy below. "Hypertext" documents (Web pages) on the WWW are files that contain active hyperlinks to other documents or files, which, in turn, may contain links to even more documents, etc. Clicking on a link (usually blue and underlined text or an image) takes you to another document. Specifically, it creates a request to be sent to the computer hosting the other documents or Web pages.

The "Hypertext Transfer Protocol" (http) is the communications protocol that makes this possible. HTTP runs on top of the Internet's TCP/IP protocol and defines how different types of hyperlinked data (text and multimedia) are transmitted and accessed. Graphical "hyperlinked" Web pages are created and displayed mostly through the use of the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). HTML is a simple way of using text characters in certain combinations ("tags") with symbols to describe how a Web page should be displayed in a Web browser. Your Internet browser (most commonly Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator) uses these HTML tags to display the web page on your screen.

The behind-the-scenes integration gives the Internet an 'endless' appearance. Here is a Post Office Analogy to the Internet.

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World Wide Web

What most people don’t know is that the Internet is built around a naming scheme that uses unique, numerical IP addresses, similar to telephone numbers, to identify places (or nodes) on the network. This is done through Domain Name System (DNS). When you type in a Web address, like netlogistiks.com, your Web browser resolves the alphabetical address through HTTP down to the numerical, physical location on the Internet, thus providing the World Wide Web (WWW).

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HTTP Protocol

.html or .htm: These files, commonly referred to as web pages, are written in an easily learnable and programmable language: Hyper-Text Markup Language (HTML).

.asp: Active Server Pages, this file type resembles HTML in presentation, but functionally the two are dynamically different. ASP is a file type that contains HTML, scripting and calls to components. It runs and is compiled server side on Microsoft Web Servers.

.gif: A common graphic format which contains no more than 256 unique colors, therefore allowing a quicker load time than JPEG. One popular utilization of GIFs is for animation; another type, common on a variety of Web sites, is the interlaced GIF, which loads in layers of increasing detail.

.jpeg or .jpg: Another common graphic format, but instead of using 256 colors JPGs are capable of up to 16 million. You will find that this format is generally reserved for photographs and detailed artwork; and, as might be assumed, these images can take longer to load than the simpler GIF.

.midi or .mid: An older standard, MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) files contain sequences of digital numbers your computer uses to interpret simple musical notes. Also, much like the GIF they are quick to load.

.wav: As opposed to MIDI, WAV files can reproduce up to CD quality music through your computer’s speakers. They are also significantly larger than MIDI files.

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Accessing your site on the web

Note: This IP address may change from time to time to support our network infrastructure and growth.

Because you want your Web server to be easily accessible on the Internet, you purchase and register a domain name (e.g. yourdomain.com) to point to your computer’s IP address. This is explained in the Registering a Domain Name section of this guide. Once done properly, you can access your site using the domain name instead of IP address as illustrated below:

http://216.122.55.xxx

http://www.yourdomain.com

Your account, along with files on your account, is accessible through a Uniform Resource Locator (URL). Because your visitors will access your site on the Internet, the URL is preceded with the HTTP protocol: http://www.yourdomain.com.

All files placed in the /htdocs directory on your account will become available to the public, most commonly index.html, default.html, etc. If you create folders beneath this directory and files in those directories, then visitors to your site will access those files using a path that starts with /htdocs. For example an index.html placed in a sales directory beneath /htdocs will be accessed using the following URL:

http://www.yourdomain.com/sales/index.html

You do not need to include the file name in the URL as long as you provide it with one of the following names:

default.htm

default.html

default.asp

index.htm

index.html

index.asp

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