The Internet › how it works Domain names must be registered and there is a fee for doing so. A website, or any content on the Internet, is hosted on a server. A web server is a machine that serves web content, and the term often refers to the software (applications) and the hardware (machine), that serve the content. Very simplistically, it works a little something like this: • Someone enters a URL in a browser. • This is translated to an IP address, which indicates where the content is located, or where the server for the content is. • The server then returns the content requested. • And the person sees the website that she requested. http://www.quirk.biz www.quirk.biz = 212.100.243.204 SERVER http://www.quirk.biz Sometimes, the server is not able to fulfil the request (i.e. not return the content requested), and instead returns a status code which can then be interpreted. Some common status codes you will encounter in this book include the below. 301: this is used to indicate that the content requested has moved permanently, and the new version of the content is returned instead. These 301 redirects are often used in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) or when a new website is launched to make sure that old links are redirected to the correct, new content.8