How the Web Works?

Understanding the processes involved in serving and rendering websites give you more knowledge on the underlying processes of how the web works.




1. A browser uses a Uniform Resource Locator URL to locate a requested content.
ex. URL: http://johnmartel.blogspot.com

2. This request will be pass on the Domain Name Server DNS. Then, the DNS will translate the URL into an IP address and return it back to the browser.
ex. URL: http://johnmartel.blogspot.com -> 69.20.128.245

3. The browser will use the IP address to locate the host server and send a request for the content.

2 Options for Step 4:

a. If the request is a simple HTML page, the HTML text is sent to the browser, rendered and presented to the user.

b. If the file type must be processed by a web application such as server side language. The page first is process and the appropriate data is returned to the browser to be rendered as well as the HTML.