The internet is a huge network of computers, connected by telephone lines, cables and satellites. We can connect to this network using our internet browsers and view information presented in the form of websites.
There are many different kinds of websites, from social media style websites like Facebook and Twitter to rich information sites like Wikipedia and sites that allow you to participate in a community like forums.
Websites consist of a collection of webpages that you can navigate around using links. On any one web page, there may be several links that take you to other web pages by clicking on them. Those links may take you to more web pages on the same website, or pages on a different website.
To connect to the internet in your own home, you will need several things:
- a computer
- a phone line or cable
- an account with an Internet Service Provider (ISP)
However, many public places like hotels and sports centres also provide internet access, too.
Internet Basics
Uniform Resource Locator (URL)
Each web page on the internet has a unique “address” called the URL. This is the sequence of characters that you see in your internet browser’s address bar. You can see the URL change as you navigate from web page to web page. The URL typically contains the website name (or domain name), a forward slash, and then the file name of the page you’re visiting. For example, the page you’re currently reading has the URL scern.org/beginners-guide-to-the-internet. the scern.org bit is the domain name, and the beginners-guide-to-the-internet bit is the name of the web page.
If you know the URL of a particular web page or site that you want to visit, you can type it directly into your browser’s address bar.
Using An Internet Browser
Internet browsers enable you to view the content on a website’s pages. This content can be in the form of text, images, video and audio. There are several ways for you to travel to a particular web page:
- type the URL of the page directly into your browser’s address bar
- click on a link on one page that leads to another page
- use a search engine
As you travel the internet in a particular “session”, the history of pages you visit grows. You can navigate backwards and forwards through this history using the back and forward buttons in your internet browser.
Your browser has what’s called a “home page” that you can change via its settings (see changing a browser’s home page). Many people have their home page set to something they visit regularly, like a search engine or Facebook, for example.
Search Engines
The chances are that you won’t know the URL of every web page, or even every website, that you are ever likely to visit. To find new information on sites you’ve never visited before, you can use a search engine. If you want to find what’s on at the cinema, you can go to a search engine like Google and type in “location cinemas”, where location is the name of the town where you live. The search engine will display a list of websites for the cinemas in your area. You can then click on any of the websites listed to visit one.
Search engines try to list websites (or more accurately, web pages) in oredr of relevance. This means that the ones you will be most interested in appear at the top. The three main search engines, in order of market share that they have, are:
Create Your Own Website
Websites aren’t just owned by big companies. Just about anybody can create and run a website. All you need is:
- a domain name (like scern.org)
- hosting (where the web pages live)
- the website itself (a collection of web pages)
Learn more about how to create a website. There are lots of reasons you might want to create a website of your own, such as a desire to express yourself, to share your knowledge and experiences, to develop a community, or just to make money.
