“The state of mind of the photographer creating is a blank. I might add that this condition exists only at special times, namely when looking for pictures. (Something keeps him from falling off curbs, down open manholes, into bumpers of skidding trucks while in this condition but goes off duty at other times.) ... This is a very special kind of blank. A very active state of mind really, it is a very receptive state ...”
Minor White

What is a Website?

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WordPress is a very popular program that is used to create blogs. You’re probably reading this because you’re wondering if you want to give it a try, or you’ve already decided but don’t quite know exactly why or what to do next. To appreciate the special qualities of WordPress we need to gain some perspective on what makes up a website, preferably without getting to technical.

What is a Web-page?

When you look at a website (like this one) you are actually only seeing half of the picture. You are looking at what is called Web-page which has a lot more then your eye can see. For example it contains information that tells it that if you click here it should open a new window and show you another Web-page which has some information about me. You don’t see all that information, but it’s there. If you hear some technical people talking about “HTML” – that’s the language in which web-pages are written. The reason you are not seeing HTML is because the web-browser application you are using to view this page hides all the information you don’t need to see and only shows you what makes sense to you.

What is a Web-Sever?

Web-pages are sent to you from another computer. When you type in a web address (called a URL) such as “www.iamronen.com” into your web-browser you are actually telling it to go to a computer that’s connected to the internet, it can be anywhere in the world, and ask it to show you what is on it. That computer is called a web-server. It is called that because it’s job is to serve you web-pages! Makes sense.  Somewhere out there is a Web-Server which has been told to answer when you ask for “www.iamronen.com”.

What is a URL?

URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator. It is a technical term used to describe a “place” on the internet. Most “places” on the internet are Web-pages. Every web-page in the world has a unique identifier (pretty amazing if you think about it) – this is it’s URL.

URL’s are made of two parts. The first is usually the name of the web-server. The second part usually comes after the web-server name and points the web-server to the unique page within it. For example.

  • “www.iamronen.com/category/yoga” will lead you to a page that contains a list of yoga-related web-pages.
  • “www.iamronen.com/contact” will lead you to page that has a contact form you can use to send me a message.

What is a Home-Page?

When you reach a web-server it shows you one web-page, a first page – this first web-page is called the Home-page .  Usually it has  some information on it and links that you can click. Those links point to other web-pages. Sometimes links point to other web-pages on the same web- server, sometimes they point to web-pages on other web-servers. For example:

  • this-link will take you to a web-page on this web-server that contains an article I wrote about WordPress.
  • this-link will take you to the another server – one that has lot’s of web-pages about WordPress itself.

What is a Web-Site?

Now it’s pretty easy to answer that question – it’s a collection of web-pages that exist on a web-server. You probably already knew that instinctively, but now we have a few basic terms to communicate some more about websites and WordPress 🙂

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