Unit 1. Website definition

Before you read

I. Test yourself

1) How would you design your personal website?

2) Why do people have personal website?

3) Have you ever visited anyone’s personal home page? What was it like?

II. Match the word to its explanation

1) document

2) professional

3) URL

4) company

5) website

6) communication

7) server

8) category

9) content

10) webmaster

a) a specific character string that constitutes a reference to an Internet resource

b) business organization

c) a person who is paid to undertake a specialised set of tasks

d) a computer file that contains text using seven-bit ASCII characters

e) the activity of conveying information

f) a computer dedicated to serve the needs of computer users on the network

g) an structure that comprises "objects" that are linked by "arrows"

i) a set of related web pages containing some content

j) a person responsible for maintaining one or many websites

k) information that may provide value for audience in specific contexts

III. Match the English and Ukrainian equivalents

1) image a) довільний

2) transport protocol b) носій, середовище

3) tools c) пересилання, переселення

4) run d) робочий комп’ютер

5) arbitrary e) виконання, запуск

6) medium f) посилання

7) host computer g) плата

8) on-line h) протокол транспортного рівня

9) transfer i) між мережний шлюз

10) board j) завантажувальний модуль

11) gateway k)інструментальні програмні засоби

12) access address l)діалоговий, оперативний

IV. Read and translate the following text Website definition

A website is a collection of related web pages, images, videos and other media that are addressed to a Uniform Resource Locator (URL). A web site is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network (the Internet or a private LAN). Web pages may contain elements from other websites and they are accessed and transported with the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), which may optionally employ encryption to provide security and privacy for the user of the web page content. Web browser renders the page content according to its HTML markup instructions onto a display terminal. The World Wide Web was created in 1989 by Conseil Europeen pour la Recherche Nucleaire (CERN) physicist Tim Berners-Lee. On 30 April 1993, CERN announced that the WWW would be free for anyone to use. Before the introduction of HTML and HTTP, other protocols such as file transfer protocol and the gopher protocol were used to retrieve individual files from a server. These protocols offer a simple way for a user to navigate and choose files to download. Documents were most often presented as plain text files without formatting or were encoded in word processor formats. The introduction of HTML and HTTP has become a great step in data transfer evolution. Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. Design of XML focuses on documents, thus, it is widely used for the representation of arbitrary data structures.

Web development is a broad term for any activity related to the developing of a web site. This can include e-commerce business development, web design, web content development, client-side/server-side scripting, and web server configuration. However, among web professionals, "web development" usually refers only to the non-design aspects of building web sites, e.g., writing markup and coding. Web development can range from developing the simplest static single page of plain text to the most complex web-based Internet applications, electronic business, or social network services. For larger businesses and organizations, web development teams can consist of hundreds of workers. Smaller organizations may only require a single permanent or contracting webmaster.

Since the 1990s, web development has been one of the fastest growing industries in the world. In 1995 there were less than 1,000 web development companies in the United States and by 2005 there were over 30,000 such companies. The web development industry is expected to grow over 20% by 2013. The growth of this industry is being pushed by large businesses wishing to sell products and services to their customers and to automate business workflow. In addition, the cost of web site development and hosting has dropped dramatically during this time. Smaller Web site development companies are now able to make web design accessible to both smaller companies and individuals further fueling the growth of the web development industry.

As far as web development tools and platforms are interconnected, there are many systems available to the public free of charge to aid in development. A popular example is the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP), which is usually distributed free of charge. Another important factor has been the rise of easy to use WYSIWYG web development software, such as Adobe Dreamweaver or Microsoft Frontpage. Using this software, virtually anyone can develop a Web page. The next generation of web development tools uses the strong growth in LAMP and Microsoft .NET technologies to provide the Web as a way to run applications on-line.

Instead of running executable code on a local computer, users are interacting with on-line applications to create new content. This has created new methods in communication and allowed for many opportunities to decentralize information and media distribution. Users are now able to interact with applications from many locations, instead of being tied to a specific workstation. Examples of dramatic transformation in communication and commerce created by web development include e-commerce. On-line auction sites have changed the way consumers use and purchase goods and services. On-line resellers, such as Amazon.com and Buy.com, have transformed the shopping experience for many consumers. Web applications, such as MovableType and WordPress, have created easily implemented blog environments for individual Web sites.

There are many types of web sites, and they may be classified in the following way:

- blog (web log) site - generally used to post on-line diaries which may include discussion forums (e.g., blogger, Xanga);

- corporate web site - used to provide background information about a business, organization or service;

- community site - where people with similar interests communicate with each other, usually by chat or message boards, such as MySpace or Facebook;

- city site - shows information about a certain city/town and events that take place there;

- information site - includes content intended to inform visitors about establishments and what they deal with. Most government, educational and non-profit institutions have an information site;

- mirror site – is a complete reproduction of a user’s website;

- personal homepage - run by an individual or a small group (such as a family) that contains information or any content that the individual wishes to include;

- video sharing - enables user to upload videos (e.g., YouTube, Google Video);

- search engine site - provides general information and is intended as a gateway or lookup for other sites (e.g., Google, Yahoo!);

- warez - designed to host and let users download copyrighted materials illegally;

- web portal - provides a starting point or a gateway to other resources on the Internet or an intranet.

Some websites may be included in one or more of these categories. For example, a business website may promote the business products, but may also host informative documents. There are also numerous sub-categories to the ones listed above. Large web sites, such as Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google employ many servers to offer modern services to users.