The What, Why, and How of Websites

Lesson Plan - Get It!

Audio:

Websites are used in our society for almost everything. Businesses, schools, hospitals, police stations, banks.... almost every organization today has a website.

Take a moment to think about all the places in your environment or world with websites. Then, think about all of the websites you use every single day.

Why do we have websites?

Since the invention of the internet in the early 1980s and the subsequent increase in our e-commerce (business conducted online), websites have become a way to communicate, connect, sell, and advertise goods and services to people worldwide.

Instead of going to a grocery store, we can buy groceries on a website and deliver them directly to our front doors! We can use a website to study at a university in the United States but live in a different country!

• Pretty amazing, isn't it?

Watch the video below to learn a bit about the history of the World Wide Web and the internet, which make websites possible.

What are websites?

• You know that YouTube and Facebook are websites, but what does that mean?

In simple terms, a website is a page or pages of data created by a developer that is stored on the World Wide Web and marked with a specific Uniform Resource Locator (URL) or domain name.

Watch the following video for a more detailed explanation.

How are websites created?

Websites are created by web designers and web developers.

Web developers create websites from scratch by coding and programming. They typically use HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to create a webpage.

HTML, which stands for hypertext markup language, is often referred to as the bones or skeleton of a web page. HTML defines the parts of the web page, like the body, header, and footer, and where different elements are placed on the page.

CSS is an abbreviation for Cascading Style Sheet. CSS is used to define and apply design elements like color and style. CSS would be like a human's skin tone, hair color, etc.

Finally, JavaScript is a programming language that tells different elements on a website, like buttons, what to do. It is similar to a body's brain or nervous system.

When you put HTML, CSS, and Javascript together, you're on your way to developing a website.

Watch the video below to review these programming codes.

Web designers, as opposed to web developers, deal with the front end of a website or how it looks and is designed.

They consider color schemes, layout, typography (fonts), images, video, and content.

All websites have a basic structure that typically includes a header, a footer, the body, content, images, and a navigation bar.

The header is at the top of the website and contains the navigation bar. It also can contain a logo and website name.

The footer is at the bottom of a website and usually contains more links for different pages and copyright information.

The body of the website contains content and images.

While watching this next video to learn about the parts of a website, take notes on the terminology.

In addition to websites built from scratch by professionals, websites can also be created these days by individuals with minimal programming or coding experience.

There are plenty of applications known as WYSIWYG or What You See is What You Get website design and development applications.

These are more user-friendly, drag-and-drop applications that show beginner designers and developers exactly what their website will look like as it is being designed. These applications do not require the user to know coding or programming.

Some WYSIWYG website applications include Google Sites and Wix.

Move on to the Got It? section to test your knowledge about websites.