Notes

All the technical stuff you'll need can be found at these links to a wiki I have been using for some years. Some bits may need updating but the basics still apply.

The explanation below comes from boutell.com who also provide more explanation of particular terms on their site.

Web pages, such as the one you are now reading, "live" on web servers all over the Internet. Those pages are written in HTML (HyperText Markup Language), a simple language that allows us to create hypertextlinks from one page to another. Designers put the content of the page (the text of the page) in the HTML file, and usually determine what the page will look like with a separate "style sheet" file. Style sheets are written in a language called CSS (Cascading Style Sheets).

Web browsers, such as the program you are using right now on your computer to see this web page, speak toweb servers in a language (a "protocol") called HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol).

But before the web browser can talk to the web server, it needs to know the web server's IP address on theInternet - just as you have to know your friend's phone number before you can call him. So how do web browsers translate a friendly name like www.google.com into an IP address? By talking to a DNS (Domain Name Service) server.

Once the web browser knows the IP address of the server, it can make an HTTP protocol connection and ask for the page you want to see.

There is also a simple animated introduction to this on the BBC website.

There are more explamations, and a tutorial you can follow a step at a time, at the links below.

Intro | How links work | Client requests | Server response | Caching | Server-side programmes | Negotiation | Cookies | Logs |Authentication | TCP and IP | FAQ