A website is a set of files and folders that you upload to a file server owned by a web hosting service. The web host makes these files accessible by uploading them to the visitors of your site.

When a visitor types your domain name into the browser address bar, the Domain Name System translates their request into the IP address of the server that hosts your website. The request then goes to the server, and the server sends the appropriate html file to the visitor’s computer. The file uploaded to the visitor’s web browser is a file, on a drive, with a pathname. This file is then rendered by the visitor’s web browser as a web page.

For example, the pathname of the file you are reading right now is

index/Pages/BoxPressLearningCenter/BoxPressReference/Tinderboxmechanics1Expor/Websitebasics.html

The pathname of an html file is called its URL.

What happens when a visitor requests a URL that is just a directory, or a simple domain name (such as mapself.com)? In both cases, the requested URL is a directory (a domain name is just the root directory for a web site). When the requested URL is a directory, there is still a file that the web server serves. This file is called the default page for that directory. On most web servers, the default page name for a directory is index.html.

When you enter http://mapself.com into your address bar, the page you see is actually http://mapself.com/index.html. The default page for your domain name is called the landing page (or front page, or home page) of your website.

The home page will contain links to the other pages of your blog. These are also html files, hopefully arranged in a directory structure that reflects their natural semantic categorization.