What is the internet?

  Thats the big question! When you look at the internet on your home computer, what you usually see is called a web page, such as you are looking at right now. These web sites are stored on other computers elsewhere, and sent to you down phone lines or similar systems.

  So essentially your computer makes a phone call to other computers; the answer is a website, which is then displayed on your computer screen. The other computers where sites are stored are called web servers, because they serve up websites.

  The internet is a worldwide NETwork of INTERconnected computers. It gives us access to a great deal of useful information. The "phone number" your computer calls to get a website is called a "domain name", or address.

  This site's domain name, for example, would be nuatech.com. You can type in domain names into your computer.

How do I use it?

  The program you use to view the internet is called a web browser, or just a browser for short. It might be internet explorer, firefox, netscape, or one of the other main browsers available.

  So, now you want to find a website on your topic of interest. How do you go about doing that? You can either type in the address in your browser (you should see a white box with something like http://www... etc) on top of the page here, or you can use a search engine. A search engine is a website that makes lists of other websites and organises them by keywords or topics.

  Some of the main search engines are Google or Yahoo. You simply enter your interest in their search box, and they come up with a list of related websites. You can then click on the links on the search page to go to these websites. Other sites besides search engines have links, which you can use to visit new websites, or different pages within sites.

Other useful information

  Here are a few terms to help you with understanding the internet and how to use it...

Forums These are websites that allow users to chat about and discuss topics of interest.

Blogs Web Logs, essentially online diaries kept by organisations or individuals. Very popular at the moment.

Directories Like search engines, except they organise information by topic and subtopic. Here is an example.

FAQ Frequently Asked Questions, a page many sites use to explain questions they are asked regularily.



More information This guide is only a very brief introduction to the internet. For further information, either check a search engine, or try this site.