A web server is a software application that serves web pages and other resources to clients over the internet or a local network. It is a fundamental component of the World Wide Web (WWW) and enables the delivery of websites, applications, and other online content to users.
When you type a website’s URL into a web browser, the browser sends a request to the web server hosting that website. The web server processes the request, retrieves the requested resources, such as HTML files, images, CSS stylesheets, or JavaScript code, and sends them back to the client’s browser. The browser then renders the received resources and displays the website to the user.
Web servers use the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) to communicate with clients. HTTP is a protocol that defines how web browsers and servers exchange information. Most web servers also support HTTPS (HTTP Secure), which is a secure version of HTTP that encrypts the data transmitted between the server and the client.
Commonly used web server software includes Apache HTTP Server, Nginx, Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS), and lighttpd. These servers run on various operating systems such as Linux, Windows, or macOS.
In addition to serving web pages, web servers can handle various other tasks such as handling form submissions, processing server-side scripts or applications, managing databases, and more. They provide the infrastructure and functionality necessary for hosting websites and enabling web-based interactions between clients and servers.
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