Web Site Development for Religious Organizations

What is a Web Site?

Basically, a web site is a set of documents (called 'web pages') that you can view via a computer network called the Internet.

Web pages are in a format called HTML (HyperText Markup Language, if you really want to know), and the program that you usually use for viewing these documents is called a web browser.

If you're viewing this web page in its original location on the Internet, then you at least know the basics of how to view such documents, even if you can't explain exactly what a web site or a web page is.

There are two things that make web pages different from other documents that you view on your computer (say, a word processing document or a spreadsheet):

1. Web pages can be located on any one of millions of computers located all around the world. If you view, say, a spreadsheet, on your computer, typically the document itself is located on your computer or a small computer network (like an office network).
2. A web page can contain links to any other web pages on the Internet. A link in a web page is a pointer to another document, and when you click on a link in your web browser, you're telling your browser to go out and find the document to which the link points, retrieve it and display it for you to view.

In principle, creating a web page differs little from creating any other type of document on your computer, such as a word processing document. In reality, just like you need to know how to operate your word processing program in order to write a letter with it, you need to know something about web pages and the programs used to create them in order to create them yourself.

So, if you want to create a web site for your religious organization, you'll be creating a set of documents about your organization, and these documents will probably contain links between each other.

Speaking of links, follow this one to the next topic: Web Site Features

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