A Website Is a Collection; a Page Is One Document
A website is a set of related web pages under one address. The distinction between site, page and domain is worth keeping straight.
A website is a collection of related pages served under one domain. Three terms get muddled: the *domain* is the address, the *site* is the collection, and a *page* is one document within it. The first website went live in 1991 at CERN, describing what the World Wide Web was and how to use it.
- A collection of web pages. *The company website.*
- Web page — one document. *A single web page.*
- Domain — the address. *Registering a domain.*
Word forms
| Form | Word | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Noun | website | A slow website. |
| Plural | websites | Several websites. |
| Compound | web page | A landing page. |
| Related | domain | A domain name. |
| Related | URL | A long URL. |
How it is used in a sentence
- The website was down for an hour.The whole site.
- Send me the page, not the site.One document.
- They registered the domain years ago.The address itself.
Web vocabulary
- Domain — the registered name, such as example.com
- Hosting — where the files live
- URL — the full address of a specific resource
- Landing page — the page a visitor arrives on
- CMS — a content management system for editing pages
A compound of *web*, from the World Wide Web, and *site*, from Latin *situs*, a position. Tim Berners-Lee proposed the web at CERN in 1989 and the first site went live in 1991.
Website or web site?
One word is now standard everywhere, though style guides argued about it for a decade.
Is the web the same as the internet?
No. The internet is the network; the web is one service running on it, alongside email and many others.