How does it work?

Essentially, a web server is nothing more than a computer with software designed to allow people to connect to it from the Internet specifically to view files in the form of web pages. Ultimately, web pages are text files containing instructions that browser programs, such as Internet Explorer, Netscape, and Firefox, can interpret to display text, images and other content on the screen for a visitor. If you are reading this document online, then your browser is interacting with a web server. At some point you either typed a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) into the address bar, or clicked a link to a URL that brought you to this page. When the browser is directed to "go" to a certain URL, it looks up the host name contained in the first part of the URL, e.g. www.evenlink.com, and sends a request to that computer for the file defined by the part that comes after the host name. As long as a file with that name exists on the computer receiving the request, that computer (the web server) will respond by transmitting the contents of that file to the browser of the computer that requested it. The browser then interprets the instructions in the file to properly layout and format the contents of the file on the screen.