Skip to content
UNWIND Code Lab Co-funded by the European Union
Welcome: How the Web Works
Log In

Welcome: How the Web Works

  • 6 min reading
  • 6 min activity
0 of 6 tasks doneup to 70 XP
  1. Your journey10 XPTo do
  2. Where are you today?10 XPTo do
  3. Web timeline10 XPOptional
  4. Internet or web?10 XPTo do
  5. From address to page15 XPTo do
  6. Who does what?15 XPTo do

Welcome to the UNWIND Code Lab. Your first mission starts now: in Unit 1 you write a real web page, on your phone or on a computer.

In this lesson
  • Describe the five steps from a web address to a page.
  • Explain browser, web server, hosting, domain name and network, and how the internet and the web are different.
  • Choose your weekly rhythm and see how lessons, challenges, cards and badges work.

Your journey

This module has 4 units, like the 4 parts of the course materials: about 6 hours in all. Each unit ends with a Unit challenge of 10 questions, and step by step you build your own website, My Website.

1 HTML Basics 78 min · you are here 2 Links, Media, Tables, Forms and Semantic HTML 80 min · structure of your website 3 CSS 102 min · colours, fonts, layout 4 JavaScript 100 min · make it interactive Every unit ends with a challenge: 10 questions.
4 units, about 6 hours. Each unit adds one step to your website.

Tap each card to see how the module works.

Concept cards

Your journey

Required 10 XP

Six things that help you in every unit. Tap each card to turn it.

Mission 1

Your first web page. Finish lessons 1.1 to 1.5, build your page in lesson 1.6 and pass the Unit 1 challenge. Extra stars: one Solo retry, the bonus exercise "Recipe card" and 10 of 10 in the challenge.

Where are you today?

How true are these sentences for you today? This is not a test. At the end of the module you answer the same sentences again, so you can see how far you came.

Practice

Where are you today?

Required 10 XP

Choose how true each sentence is for you today. This is not a test, and there are no wrong answers. You can always choose "Prefer not to say". The UNWIND Code Lab team uses the answers only together with the answers of other learners, without names.

Plan your week

How many days a week do you want to learn: 1, 2 or 3? One lesson takes 10 to 12 minutes. You can change your goal later on your profile, and a week without learning breaks nothing.

[[rhythm-goal]]

Where the web comes from

Think first

Think of the last website you opened. What happened before you saw the page?

1969

ARPANET, the network that grew into the internet, connected its first computers at universities in the USA. Its aim was to let research computers share their resources. A popular story says it was built to survive a nuclear war, but that was never its aim. (Internet Society)

1989

Tim Berners-Lee at CERN, a research centre near Geneva, proposed the World Wide Web: pages written in HTML that link to each other. (W3C)

The idea of linked texts is older, but his web made it work across the internet. HTML5 later added video, audio and tags that describe the parts of a page. Today HTML is a living standard: it keeps growing.

Optional: put the history in order.

Sorting

Web timeline

10 XP

Optional. Put the history of the web in order, from the earliest step to today.

The internet and the web

Computers in a home or an office form a local network. Local networks connect into bigger wide area networks. These networks connect to form the internet, one global network. The World Wide Web is one service on the internet. Email is another one.

Quick check

Internet or web?

Required 10 XP

From address to page

Guess first: what happens after you type a web address? Put the steps in order. Then check your guess with the example below.

Sorting

From address to page

Required 15 XP

Guess first. You can try again after you read the example.

Worked example

Ayla (a fictional learner) types the web address, the URL, https://example.org. DNS works like an address book: it finds the number of the server, its IP address. Follow the five steps in the picture.

1 You type a web address https://example.org 2 DNS finds the IP address example.org = 203.0.113.5 3 Your browser asks the server "Please send me the page." 4 The server sends the files HTML, CSS, JavaScript, pictures 5 Your browser builds the page You see text, colours and pictures.
From a web address to the page you see, in five steps.

Who does what?

Browser

The program that reads HTML, CSS and JavaScript and shows the page.

Web server

A computer that stores web pages and sends them. Your pages must be on one before other people can visit them.

Hosting

Space on a web server that you rent. It can be small or a whole server.

Domain name

The name of a website, like example.org. You register it for a year or more. Endings are general (.com, .org) or country codes (.de, .gr, .tr).

Matching

Who does what?

Required 15 XP

Match each part of the web with its job.

URL
A web address, like https://example.org.
DNS
The address book of the internet: it finds the IP address of a name.
Browser
The program that shows web pages.
Web server
A computer that stores web pages and sends them.
Hosting
Rented space on a web server.
Domain name
The name of a website, like example.org.
Network
Computers that are connected and can share data.
Internet and web
The internet is the global network. The web is one service on it.

In short

  • 4 units, about 6 hours, a challenge at the end of each unit, and My Website step by step.
  • Address, DNS, request, answer, page: five steps bring a page to your screen.
  • The internet is the network. The web is one service on it.
Next time

What is HTML? You write and run your first web page.

Sources

  1. Internet Society (1997). A Brief History of the Internet.
  2. W3C (2026). Tim Berners-Lee.
  3. W3C (2026). A Little History of the World Wide Web.
  4. WHATWG (2026). HTML Living Standard: Introduction and history.
  5. MDN Web Docs (2026). How the web works.
  6. MDN Web Docs (2026). How does the Internet work?
  7. MDN Web Docs (2026). What is a web server?
  8. MDN Web Docs (2026). What is a domain name?
  9. MDN Web Docs (2026). DNS.

End of the lesson

This lesson: 0 of 80 XP

Code Cards in this lesson: 4

  • URL
  • Browser
  • Web server
  • Domain name
Next: What Is HTML? Your First Page