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Types of websites
There are many varieties of websites, each specializing in a particular type of
content or use, and they may be arbitrarily classified in any number of ways. A
few such classifications might include:[original research?]
* Affiliate: enabled portal that renders not only its custom CMS but also
syndicated content from other content providers for an agreed fee. There are
usually three relationship tiers. Affiliate Agencies (e.g., Commission
Junction), Advertisers (e.g., eBay) and consumer (e.g., Yahoo!).
* Archive site: used to preserve valuable electronic content threatened with
extinction. Two examples are: Internet Archive, which since 1996 has preserved
billions of old (and new) web pages; and Google Groups, which in early 2005 was
archiving over 845,000,000 messages posted to Usenet news/discussion groups.
* Blog (web log): sites generally used to post online diaries which may include
discussion forums (e.g., blogger, Xanga).
* Brand building site: a site with the purpose of creating an experience of a
brand online. These sites usually do not sell anything, but focus on building
the brand. Brand building sites are most common for low-value, high-volume fast
moving consumer goods (FMCG).
* City Site: A site that shows information about a certain city or town and
events that takes place in that town. Usually created by the city council or
other "movers and shakers".
o the same as those of geographic entities, such as cities and countries. For
example, Richmond.com is the geodomain for Richmond, Virginia.
* Community site: a site where persons with similar interests communicate with
each other, usually by chat or message boards, such as MySpace or Facebook.
* Content site: sites whose business is the creation and distribution of
original content (e.g., Slate, About.com).
* Corporate website: used to provide background information about a business,
organization, or service.
* Electronic commerce (e-commerce) site: a site offering goods and services for
online sale and enabling online transactions for such sales.
* Forum: a site where people discuss various topics.
* Gripe site: a site devoted to the critique of a person, place, corporation,
government, or institution.
* Humor site: satirizes, parodies or otherwise exists solely to amuse.
* Information site: contains content that is intended to inform visitors, but
not necessarily for commercial purposes, such as: RateMyProfessors.com, Free
Internet Lexicon and Encyclopedia. Most government, educational and non-profit
institutions have an informational site.
* Java applet site: contains software to run over the Web as a Web application.
* Mirror site: A complete reproduction of a website.
* Microblog : a short and simple form of blogging.
* News site: similar to an information site, but dedicated to dispensing news
and commentary.
* Personal homepage: run by an individual or a small group (such as a family)
that contains information or any content that the individual wishes to include.
These are usually uploaded using a web hosting service such as Geocities.
* Phish site: a website created to fraudulently acquire sensitive information,
such as passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy
person or business (such as Social Security Administration, PayPal) in an
electronic communication (see Phishing).
* Political site: A site on which people may voice political views.
* Porn site: A site that shows sexually explicit content for enjoyment and
relaxation, most likely in the form of an Internet gallery, dating site, blog,
social networking, or video sharing.
* Rating site: A site on which people can praise or disparage what is featured.
* Review site: A site on which people can post reviews for products or services.
* School site: a site on which teachers, students, or administrators can post
information about current events at or involving their school. U.S.
elementary-high school websites generally use k12 in the URL, such as
kearney.k12.mo.us.
* Search engine site: a site that provides general information and is intended
as a gateway or lookup for other sites. A pure example is Google, and well-known
sites include Yahoo! Search and Bing (search engine).
* Shock site: includes images or other material that is intended to be offensive
to most viewers (e.g. rotten.com).
* Social bookmarking site: a site where users share other content from the
Internet and rate and comment on the content. StumbleUpon and Digg are examples.
* Social networking site: a site where users could communicate with one another
and share media, such as pictures, videos, music, blogs, etc. with other users.
These may include games and web applications.
* Video sharing: A site that enables user to upload videos, such as YouTube and
Google Video.
* Warez: a site designed to host and let users download copyrighted materials
illegally.
* Web portal: a site that provides a starting point or a gateway to other
resources on the Internet or an intranet.
* Wiki site: a site which users collaboratively edit (such as Wikipedia and
Wikihow).
Some websites may be included in one or more of these categories. For example, a
business website may promote the business's products, but may also host
informative documents, such as white papers. There are also numerous
sub-categories to the ones listed above. For example, a porn site is a specific
type of e-commerce site or business site (that is, it is trying to sell
memberships for access to its site). A fan site may be a dedication from the
owner to a particular celebrity.
Websites are constrained by architectural limits (e.g., the computing power
dedicated to the website). Very large websites, such as Yahoo!, Microsoft, and
Google employ many servers and load balancing equipment such as Cisco Content
Services Switches to distribute visitor loads over multiple computers at
multiple locations.
In February 2009, Netcraft, an Internet monitoring company that has tracked Web
growth since 1995, reported that there were 215,675,903 websites with domain
names and content on them in 2009, compared to just 18,000 websites in August
1995.
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