MASENO UNIVERSITY.

SCHOOL OF EDUCATION.

DEPARTMENT OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY.

COURSE TITLE: The Internet and World Wide Web.

COURSE CODE: UCI 201

COURSE LECTURER:

SUBMITTION DATE: 10TH NOVEMBER 2023

GROUP MEMBERS.

1. VINCENT OWINO.
EAR/00435/022
2. NAMACHANJA CHRISTINE. ESN/00134/021
3. Dorine Akinyi Masudi. EAR/00680/022
4. Oketch Martha Awuor. EAR/00285/022
5. Collins kipchirchir.
ESC/00246/022
6. ARORI DOUGLAS MAYEIKO. EAR/00127/022
7. Mercy Namulanda
EAR/00889/021---(Resit)
8. Wickliffe ooko
EEC/00098/021---(Resit)
 9. Kipyego Abel.
ESC/00121/022
10. Kagasi Jared.
EEC/00018/022

1. SUMMARY OF DATABASES, WEB DEVELOPMENT TOOLS AND WEB

HOSTING.

DATABASES.

Database is a structured collection of related data. A computer based database is used to store
information in a structured form which can be retrieved and examined quickly and easily. The
database management system (DBMS) is the software that facilitates the creation and
maintenance of a computerized database. In general the DBMS enables: The management of
large amounts of data. Access to the data using a Query language. Provision of some form of
security to the data. Multiple database access . MySQL is a very powerful database
management system and works extraordinarily well with PHP. You can find all about MySQL at
their web site: MySQL is in fact a relational database management system. A relational database
stores data in separate tables instead of one single store. In theory this provides a faster, more
flexible database system.. Create a database using phpMyAdminDATABASE
 phpMyAdminMySQL can be controlled through a simple command line interface,
however to make life more easy for us we are going to use a graphical user interface which is
accessible through a web browser. This interface is known as phpMyAdmin (because it is written
in PHP)ASP.NETASP.Net allows the following sources of data to be accessed and used: Databases
(e.g., Access, SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL)XML documents Business Objects Flat filesASP.Net
hides the complex processes of data access and provides much higher level of classes and
objects through which data is accessed easily. These classes hide all complex coding for
connection, data retrieving, data querying and data manipulation. ADO.Net is the technology
that provides the bridge between various ASP.Net control objects and the backend data source.
We will come to ADO.Net in due time. In this tutorial, we will look at data access and working
with the data without going into the details of its inner workings. Retrieve and display data It
takes two types of data controls to retrieve and display data in ASP.Net A data source control. It
manages the connection to the data, selection of data and other jobs like paging and caching of
data etc. A data view control. It binds and displays the data and allows data manipulation. We
will discuss the data binding and data source controls in details later. In this section, we will use
a SqlDataSource control to access data and a Grid View control to display and manipulate data.
We will also use an Access database, which has details about .Net books available in the market.
Name of our database is ASPDotNetStepByStep.mdb and we will use the data table
DotNetReferences. The table has the following columns: ID, Title, Author First Name, Author
Last Name, Topic, and Publisher.

WEB DEVELOPMENT TOOLS AND WEB HOSTING

Computer Machine : If you do not have computer available and you received this tutorial
printed on a paper then I would say that first of all you would need a computer machine
running either Windows or Linux or Unix or Macintosh system or any other operating system.
Internet Connection: If you are not connected to the internet and you received this tutorial
printed on a paper then I would say that this is second and another most important tool would
need to connect to the Internet and to you Web Server where you will host your web site. For
this purpose you can buy either a dial up connection or broadband connection of high speed
connectivity based on your requirement and budget. A Web Server : Apart from basic Internet
connectivity you will need one Web Server to keep your all the files related to your Web sit. So
you would need to buy space on a Web Server. There are millions of ISPs who are in business of
selling web space at competitive prices. We will give more detail on this in Web Hosting
Concepts chapter. A Text Editor: This is another most important tool which you will need to
develop your Web site. If you are using Windows then you can use notepad as a text editor, or if
you are using Linux/Unix then vi editor is one of my favorite editors. You will need this editor to
write your HTML, PHP or ASP pages or for any other editing purpose. For practice purpose your
can use our Online HTML Editor. A Web Browser: You will need this tool to see the result of your
HTML file. So you should have either Internet Explorer or Firefox etc. installed on your
computer. Web Authoring Tools: If you don’t want to use a simple Text Editor to edit your HTML
files then there are many commercial Web Authoring Tools available. These tools are also called
HTML editors. Microsoft’s FrontPage and Macromedia Dreamweaver are both a visual HTML
(WYSIWYG) and HTML source code editor. These editors helps you to develop your HTML pages
vary rapidly. Secure telnet client: If you are connecting to your Web server directly then you can
use a tool called PUTTY. This is what I’m using while connecting to my web server. Secure FTP
client: If you are connecting to your Web server directly using FTP client to upload or download
your web files then you can use a tool called PSFTP. FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. Simply
put, after you design your web site, you need to send it to the Web and your FTP program will
do just that for you. This is what I’m using while connecting to my web server.

WEB HOSTING

Web hosting means to put your web site content on a Web server. Hosting your web site on
your own server could be an option. But this will become very much expansive unless you are
hosting a site like yahoo.com or google.com. So this tutorials does not cover how to set up your
own hosting server. Buying a server space or renting a complete server from an Internet Service
Provider (ISP) are most widely used options. This section guides you to choose a hosting type
and makes you aware of other related concepts.

HOSTING PLATFORMS.
You can go for any of the following two most widely used hosting platforms: Windows Hosting
Servers : If you are a Windows lover then you will find many hosting servers running different
flavors of Windows and you can buy space from these servers. Normally Window hosting server
are more expansive because of lot of software incensing costs are involved with these servers
Linux Hosting Servers: If you want to go for Linux then opportunities are unlimited and they will
have to pay less then what you will pay for Windows Hosting Server. There are many ISP who
provides Hosting Servers with different flavors of Unix.

HOSTING TYPES.

There are many options available and you can select any hosting type based on your
requirement and budget. Following are most widely used hosting types:

• Free Hosting: Yes, this is true there are many service providers who will give you free
space on their web server with a condition that you will allow them to run their
advertisement at your web pages. So if you are OK with this option then you have
nothing to pay for a space. There are some web sites like geocities.com, lycos.com,
myspace.com etc. who give you space to build your web pages. Shared Hosting: With
shared hosting, your web site is hosted on a powerful server along with other web sites.
On a shared host you will have your own user ID and password to login to the shared
host and you will be allowed to work in your work area. You would not be able to touch
any file or directory belonging to other host partner. Even you would not know how
many sites are hosted on your shared host. This type of hosting is very cost effective and
good for small web site where your space and speed are not very important. Here traffic
on one site will affect the speed of all other hosted sites.

• Virtual Dedicated Hosting: This type of hosting is better for medium size business. With
virtual dedicated hosting you will have a dedicated bandwidth and dedicated RAM for
your site. You will be given root ID and password to maintain your Web server. You will
be complete owner of your virtual dedicated server and will be able to install or de-
install any software. This type of hosting is created on a single server but It is managed in
 such a way that every user will have dedicated speed and bandwidth. This is bit more
expansive but really good one for medium size business.

• Dedicated Hosting: This type of hosting is very similar to virtual dedicated hosting but
here complete machine will be allotted for you. They are more expansive than virtual
dedicated hosting and should be considered when you have a very high traffic
requirement.

• Collocated Hosting: This is very difficult to set you dedicated resources like high-security
against fire and vandalism, regulated backup power, dedicated Internet connections and
more. So collocation is the option which allows you to put your machine in a service
provider’s premises to avail all the available facilities. This is also a very expensive option

and should be opted when you have very high traffic requirement.

HOSTING COMPONENTS.

When you buy a Web server space then you should be clear about the follows. You should do
price comparison between different service providers based on the following components:

• Disc Space: A small or medium web site will need between 10 and 100MB of disk space.
If you plan to keep lot of audio and Video on your web site then you need plan to buy
more space. Before buying server space you should check the options available to
expand your disc space if you need it in future.

• Monthly Traffic: A small or medium web site will need between 1GB and 10GB of data
transfer on monthly basis. If you plan to keep lot of audio and Video on your web site
then you need plan to look for more data transfer capacity. Check different options
based on your requirements. What are other options available in case you cross the
given data transfer limit. Your site should not be stopped in case you reach to the given
limit. Processing Speed: If you are buying space on a shared machine then you can not
guess how much speed will be given to you. In that case only way is to see other hosted
sites with the same service provider to know about their hosting quality. But if you are
buying virtual dedicated server or dedicated server then you should consider how much
 RAM is being allocated to you. Your pricing will depend on the given processing power to
you. Connection Speed: Now a days very fast connection speed is available from most of
the service providers. So choose a service provider who is giving better connection
speed in terms of bits per second. You can have connection speed ranging from 64Kb per
second to 2.488Gb per second.

• Email Accounts: Make sure you are going to get sufficient number of e-mail accounts.
There are many other options available which come along with your e-mail account.
Like, will you get IMAP, POP and E-mail Forwarding options available along with your e-
mail facilities.

• Emailing Support: Apart form having email accounts it is also very important that your
web server should have a facility to send emails from back-end. In case your site visitors
want to contact to you using a form provided by you then you will be able to use that
emailing facility to send email to your designated account. In simple terms you should
make sure that SMTP Server is setup and working on your Web server.

• Latest Technologies: You should make sure that your web server is equipped with all the
latest technologies. It should have latest version support for PHP, PERL, ASP and JAVA
etc. Databases: There are many databases available MySQL, Oracle, SQL Server etc. So
you should choose your server based on your database requirement. If you are buying
space on a shared server then you need to verify how much space will be allocated for
your database. Many ISP does not give more than a limited space for databases. So if
your site needs lot of database size then you should go for virtual dedicated server.

• Server Uptime: This is very important to buy a web server from a reliable and reputed
ISP. You should make sure your ISP is giving you 99.99% server uptime. If there is server
down then there are many service providers who gives you compensation in case your
sites goes down more than a limited time.

• Backup & FTP: Make sure your Service Provider is giving you or more ways of taking
regular backup of your web site. If your site is changing everyday then it becomes very
important that you should take regular backup of your web site. Many service providers
do it on your behalf but they charge very little cost for this service. Control Panel: Just
 make sure what type of facilities you will get to maintain your hosting account. If your
service provider is providing you an easy to use control panel or some other similar tool.
Using a control panel you should be able to maintain basic operations related to your
web site especially like log your service request, your reboot request or any other
problem. Customer Support: Before finalizing a deal with your service provider you
should make sure they will provide your required support. You can get this information

using Internet forums or from your friends.

2. Write one paragraph on each of the following words

• Proxy server
• Telnet
• FTP
• IRC
• NNTP

Proxy Server.

A proxy server is a system or router that provides a gateway between users and the internet.
Therefore, it helps prevent cyber attackers from entering a private network. It is a server,
referred to as an “intermediary” because it goes between end-users and the web pages they
visit online. When a computer connects to the internet, it uses an IP address. This is similar
to your home’s street address, telling incoming data where to go and marking outgoing data
with a return address for other devices to authenticate. A proxy server is essentially a

computer on the internet that has an IP address of its own.

Telnet.

The name “telnet” is short for “teletype network protocol. “In a nutshell, telnet is a
computer protocol that was built for interacting with remote computers. It enables
terminal-to-terminal communication and can be used for a variety of purposes. The word
“telnet” also refers to the command-line utility “telnet,” available under Windows OS and
 Unix-like systems, including Mac, Linux, and others. We will use the term “Telnet” mainly in
the context of the telnet client software. Telnet utility allows remote user access to test
connectivity to remote machines and issue commands through a keyboard. Though most
users opt to work with graphical interfaces, telnet is one of the simplest ways to check
connectivity on certain ports.

FTP (File Transfer Protocol)

FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is a network protocol for transmitting files between computers over
Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) connections. Within the TCP/IP suite,
FTP is considered an application layer protocol. In an FTP transaction, the end user’s computer
is typically called the local host. The second computer involved in FTP is a remote host, which is
usually a server. Both computers need to be connected via a network and configured properly
to transfer files via FTP. Servers must be set up to run FTP services, and the client must have FTP
software installed to access these services. Although many file transfers can be conducted using
Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) – another protocol in the TCP/IP suite – FTP is still commonly
used to transfer files behind the scenes for other applications, such as banking services. It is also
sometimes used to download new applications via web browsers.

IRC.

IRC – Internet Relay Chat is a method to broadcast and receive live, synchronous, messages.
There are hundreds of IRC channels (discussion areas) around the world, hosted on servers, on
which people type their messages to others on the same channel interested in the same
subject. There are client IRC programs which provide graphical interfaces which make it easier
for people log on and access active channels and send and receive the messages. IRC chat, at
present, is not limited to two people, unlike earlier versions. You need a software program to
access the IRC channels. The server acts as a router, making sure that all messages are sent to
the discussion participants. There are many different programs that allow you to engage in

Internet Relay Chat.

NNTP (Network News Transfer Protocol).

The Network News Transfer Protocol, NNTP for short, is essentially a TCP/IP transfer protocol for
messages within newsgroups. These newsgroups are mainly utilized as part of the Usenet,
where they offer, as a type of precursor of modern internet forums, space for the exchange of
an unlimited number of text messages on the most diverse topics. The first specification of the
NNTP, which was recorded in RFC 977, dates back to 1986. Since then, the protocol has been
revised several times – the current version can be found in RFC 3977. Furthermore, since RFC
5536 appeared in 2009, a Request for Comments has existed, which also specifies more

precisely the NNTP transfer’s message format.

3.Discuss the difference between CSS and HTML.

HTML and CSS are both essential technologies for building websites, but they serve different
purposes and have distinct roles.HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) is the standard markup
language used to structure the content of a webpage. It provides the building blocks for
organizing and presenting text, images, videos, hyperlinks, forms, and other elements on a
webpage. HTML uses a tag-based syntax, where elements are enclosed in angle brackets (<>)
and consist of opening and closing tags. These tags define the structure and semantics of the
content, such as headings, paragraphs, lists, tables, and more. HTML lays the foundation for the
webpage’s structure and content hierarchy’s (Cascading Style Sheets), on the other hand, is a
stylesheet language used for describing the presentation and visual appearance of an HTML
document. CSS allows you to control how the HTML elements are displayed on the screen, In
print, or in other media. It provides a set of rules and properties that define the colors, fonts,
layout, sizing, spacing, and other visual aspects of the webpage. CSS separates the presentation
layer from the content layer, enabling a clear separation of concerns and making it easier to
make stylistic changes across multiple pages of a website. Here are some key differences
between HTML and CSS:

• Purpose: HTML focuses on structuring and organizing content, while CSS is responsible
for the new presentation and visual styling of the content. Syntax: HTML uses tags
 enclosed in angle brackets (<>) to define and structure the elements of a webpage. CSS
uses selectors and declarations to target elements and specify their styles.

• Role: HTML serves as the backbone of a webpage, defining its structure, semantics, and
accessibility. CSS enhances the appearance and layout of the HTML elements, allowing
for custom designs.

• Usage: HTML is necessary for any webpage, as it defines the content and its structure.
CSS is optional but highly recommended to improve the visual appeal, layout, and
consistency of a webpage.

• Dependency: HTML is independent and can function without CSS. However, CSS relies
on HTML since it styles and modifies the structure defined by HTML.

• File Types: HTML files usually have a .html or .htm extension, while CSS files have a .css
extension. However, HTML and CSS can also be embedded within the same HTML file
using <style> tags. In summary, HTML provides the structure and content of a webpage,
while CSS enhances its presentation and visual appeal. Both technologies are crucial for
web development, and proficiency in both HTML and CSS is essential for creating well-

designed and functional websites.