Web page

Each article on the Wikipedia website is a distinct web page. The URL is visible in the browser's address bar at the top.

A web page (or webpage) is a Web document that is accessed in a web browser. A website typically consists of many web pages linked together under a common domain name. The term "web page" is therefore a metaphor of paper pages bound together into a book.

Each web page is identified by a distinct Uniform Resource Locator (URL). When the user inputs a URL into their web browser, the browser retrieves the necessary content from a web server and then transforms it into an interactive visual representation on the user's screen.

If the user clicks or taps a link, the browser repeats this process to load the new URL, which could be part of the current website or a different one. The browser has features, such as the address bar, that indicate which page is displayed.

Elements

The home page of NASA from 2008

A web page is a structured document. The core element is a text file written in the HyperText Markup Language (HTML). This specifies the content of the page, including images and video.

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) specify the presentation of the page. CSS rules can be in separate text files or embedded within the HTML file.

The vast majority of pages have JavaScript programs, enabling a wide range of behavior. The newer WebAssembly language can also be used as a supplement.

The most sophisticated web pages, known as web apps, combine these elements in a complex manner.

Deployment

From the perspective of server-side website deployment, there are two types of web pages: static and dynamic. Static pages are retrieved from the web server's file system without any modification, while dynamic pages must be created by the server on the fly, typically reading from a database to fill out a template, before being sent to the user's browser. An example of a dynamic page is a search engine results page.

See also

References

Uses material from the Wikipedia article Web page, released under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license.