HTML Basics
Stanford University Libraries & Academic Information Resources

Terminology

The terms document, page, home page, and web are used rather inconsistently in the HTML world, all being (sometimes) considered synonymous. This guide will probably be just as inconstent as every other, so don't get too concerned about it.

In general, HTML folks use the terms document or page to refer to the chunk of text that your browser retrieves in a single action (i.e. what you get back if you select a hypertext link, open a URL, etc.). In most but not all cases, this equates to what is stored in a single file on the server. The 'thing' you are reading right now (if you're reading this online and not in printed copy), is a document or page. So what do we call the collection of pages, images, indexes, etc., that makes up the work called "HTML Basics"? Some authors refer to this as a web (perhaps with a lowercase "w"). The World Wide Web then, is the totality of all the "small 'w' webs".

This guide tends to favour--but not consistently use--the term work for a collection of related pages meant to be experienced as an integrated entity. Descriptive bibliographers will, of course, find this usage utterly debasing, and deconstructionists will point out that the Web has already functionally destroyed whatever meaning concepts like integration, entity, and work ever had.

Home page is also used inconsistently. Many people insist that the term Home page appropriately refers to a page that an individual reader has established as his/her "home", the document retrieved when the browser starts up or when the users selects the "home" button/icon/link. To these people, phrases like "Stanford Libraries & Academic Information Resources Home Page" or "XYZ Widget Company WhizBang Home Page" are misnomers, except for those few individuals who actually use that page as their "home", and that these pages should be called "Welcome pages".

Other people (including, I suspect, most people who actually write corporate or university 'Welcome pages" since the phrase appears in a great number of such pages) consider a home page to refer to any page that serves as the main entry-point (or in server jargon, the "document root"[1]) of an autonomous or discrete document space. To these people the "Stanford Libraries & Academic Information Resources Home Page" refers to the document referenced by the URL "/", even though nobody but a raving lunatic or webmaster would use such a page as their "home".

Confused? Welcome to the Web--it's a dizzy place.