There is a difference between the Web and the Internet
My last blog stirred up some questions, not so much about the importance of website maintenance, but the revelation that there is a difference between the Web and the Internet.
I learned this early in University when I started building and designing websites in 2008. I thought the same thing, that the World Wide Web was the internet.
World Wide Web and the Internet
If it wasn’t for the Internet, there would be no World Wide Web. So, here is the short version of how this all started and why it is important to your website.
Back in the 60’s, where people relied on the good old telephone and the telegraph to communicate, our Military wanted another way to interconnect, and they wanted to do it through computers. A group of men, including Ron Kunzelman, Stan Fralick, and Donald Nielson from UCLA, wrote protocols or rules that enabled computer networks around the globe to talk to each other. And “Wallah!” the Internet was born.
The Ethernet was conceived by Bob Metcalfe in 1973. The Modem, remember those? Actually, I still think they’re around. The Modem was introduced by Dennis Haynes and Dale Heatherington in 1977. This all part of the internet communicating with computers.
The World Wide Web didn’t arrive on the scene until the 80’s and is credited to Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who currently lives in London. Berners-Lee published a paper over 25 years ago and proposed a different system for managing information, one of which became the World Wide Web as we know it. Domain Name Servers (DNS) were introduced in 1984, which is equivalent to a phone book. They maintain a directory of domain names and translate them to Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. The first domain name on the World Wide Web was symbolics.com and it is currently built on a WordPress Theme!
The Evolution of Websites
Brad Templeton, a professor at Singularity University puts it pretty simply; “One of the great realizations: You think you want to do it structured, you think you have a vision of the order of how it should all work and be laid out,” Templeton said. “[But] the idea is that you don’t have an official hierarchy. Remember the Dewey Decimal System? You’d go in and say ‘Let’s look up information on a science, and in science, there’ll be anthropology, and so you’ll go down and find things. Instead, it’s just a big sea of documents.” These “documents” soon became known as “web pages’ that people could find by typing in an address or URL’s, as we now call them. Documents of information would be linked to other websites, thereby creating a “web of information.”
This is a very, very short history of how all this internet and web technology stuff got started. Each has its own story. I know I’ve missed a lot of names, but you can always search if you want to learn more.
Today, websites have a deeper meaning, or I should say more purpose. Because of search engines, like Google, websites are more about design, functionality, and personalization. The design is based on user experience. Functionality is based on structure and ease of navigation. Personalization is based on rich and relevant content a target audience can resonate with. (I guess this would have to be another blog.)
There is a difference between the Web and the Internet. So, when I say you must have website maintenance it is because the technology is constantly changing. The technology on the Internet and the technology on the World Wide Web change, which in turn means your website needs maintenance so it can function … properly https://www.247carlocksmiths.com/ignition-switch-service. Phew!
