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First, a quick message from Common Craft.

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This video comes in versions designed for use in training and education.

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Find them at commoncraft.com.

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Have you ever wondered, when you visit a website, where those words and images come from?

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This is the World Wide Web in plain English.

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These days, as long as we have an internet connection, using the web is pretty easy.

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We can visit billions of pages on things from pet alligators to the weather in Holland.

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To help figure out how it works, let's pretend we can get really small,

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follow the wires, and explore what makes the web work.

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In order to get to the web, we need a connection from our home or business to the rest of the online world.

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This usually happens through the phone or cable lines, or even satellite.

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This connection means that information from around the world can reach our computers.

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If we could see the connection, the information coming through it would look like little packets of code.

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It doesn't make sense to most people.

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We need a translator, something that turns the packets of code into words and images we see on a website.

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For this, we use a web browser.

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It translates the information and makes it useful to us.

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But that code has to come from somewhere, right?

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If we could follow it to its home, we'd see that it's coming from another computer.

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Not a regular computer, but one that's built to make webpages available.

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It's called a server.

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The words and images that appear on our screen live here in the server.

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If there was only one server, this would be simple.

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But there are millions of servers and webpages.

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We need a way to find a specific page on a specific server.

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We do this with web addresses.

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Each server and website has a unique one.

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As long as we have the right web address, we can visit a page on any server on the web.

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The reason we call it a web is that all the servers are connected.

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We can easily jump from one to the other using addresses via our web browser.

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And we don't have to remember all the addresses.

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Webpages use shortcuts or links.

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Words and images we can click that direct us to page after page.

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These links create a web of connections that are easy to navigate.

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Together, this system makes up the World Wide Web.

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So, let's sum it up.

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To visit a website, we type in a web address or click a link.

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The information for the website lives on a server.

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It comes to us as little packets of code.

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And our web browser translates this code into words, photos, music, videos, and links that help us get things done.

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Yay!

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I'm Lee Lefevre of Common Craft.

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And this has been the World Wide Web in plain English.

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Do you need this for work?

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Find presentation-quality, unbranded versions of all Common Craft videos at commoncraft.com.