computers

twirling ballI'm going to try to explain what little I know about how computers work. I want to demystify some of the terms that are floating around this site, and put my Web Page Glossary all in one place, so you can print it out if you want to.

twirling ballNow, I guess you know the basics: your computer is hooked up to the internet through a telephone line. A telephone line sends information in a different way than a computer. That's why you need a modem.

twirling ball The modem is what you actually plug the line into, and it modulates and demodulates the information (changes it from computer language, to telephone language, then back to computer language at the other end). Everyone with an internet connection has a modem.

twirling ball All these computers are sending stuff out, and it lands at a server. This is a special high-powered computer that can handle a lot of connections at one time. A server can be used by a hosting company or an Internet service provider (ISP).

twirling ball A hosting company just gives you a place to lay your page; a little home on the web. An ISP gives you a whole neighborhood. An example of an ISP is America Online. If you have a connection through this ISP, you can get onto the internet..or you can spend all your time within AOL, talking only to AOL people, reading only AOL stuff, and publishing your page on AOL with AOL webpage software. The internet is like a highway; an ISP is the on-ramp.

twirling ball Anyway...all the computers connected to the internet in this way form a big conglomeration called the World Wide Web. The WWW is a part of the internet...but there are many other parts. Most pages in the WWW end with a .com. This means "commercial". There are also .edu sites ("education"), which are colleges and schools. There are .net sites, which stands for "network" (something to do with business). And there are .org sites ("organization"), like the Red Cross.

twirling ball Imagine that the World Wide Web is sitting on a big, tall hill. You and your computer are sitting up at the bottom. When you take some data off the internet and zing it through the lines to you, it has to go down the hill. Therefore, when you bring something to you, you are downloading. When you send something from your computer up the hill to someone else, you are uploading.

twirling ball Everything you send up and down the hill is in the form of files. Your computer is like a giant filing cabinet. Some of the files in there are buried so deep, you'll never read them, and you wouldn't understand them if you did. But the ones up near the top are all yours. You have files that are documents, files that are pictures, files that are sounds. They are kept in those little file folders, and you can move them around and store them any way you like. It took me a while to figure this out...I couldn't find anyplace where they just told you how to do files. So here is my best shot- for all you beginners out there: The file story.

twirling ball What's a Domain? Really, it's just a name. A URL (the address to your website) can get extremely long. So a domain name is a way to shorten your web address, so people can find you more easily. You have to pay for it - a $70 start-up fee (that's for 2 years). And you've got to make sure that nobody else has the name you want already. But once you purchase your domain name, all your visitors have to do is type "www.your-domian-name.com" to get to your site.

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