English Wikipedia home screen in browser

A home page (or homepage) is the main

web page A web page (or webpage) is a World Wide Web, Web document that is accessed in a web browser. A website typically consists of many web pages hyperlink, linked together under a common domain name. The term "web page" is therefore a metaphor of pap ...

of a

website A website (also written as a web site) is any web page whose content is identified by a common domain name and is published on at least one web server. Websites are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose, such as news, educatio ...

. Usually, the home page is located at the

root In vascular plants, the roots are the plant organ, organs of a plant that are modified to provide anchorage for the plant and take in water and nutrients into the plant body, which allows plants to grow taller and faster. They are most often bel ...

of the website's domain or

subdomain In the Domain Name System (DNS) hierarchy, a subdomain is a domain that is a part of another (main) domain. For example, if a domain offered an online store as part of their website it might use the subdomain. Overview The Domain Name System ...

. For example, if the domain is example.com, the home page is likely located at the

URL A uniform resource locator (URL), colloquially known as an address on the Web, is a reference to a resource that specifies its location on a computer network and a mechanism for retrieving it. A URL is a specific type of Uniform Resource Identi ...

www.example.com/. The term may also refer to the start page shown in a

web browser A web browser, often shortened to browser, is an application for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's scr ...

when the application first opens.

Function

A home page is the main web page that a visitor will view when they navigate to a website via a search engine, and it may also function as a

landing page In online marketing, a landing page, sometimes known as a "lead capture page", "single property page", "static page", "squeeze page" or a "destination page", is a single web page that appears in response to clicking on a search engine optimized s ...

to attract visitors. In some cases, the home page is a site directory, particularly when a website has multiple home pages. Good home page design is usually a high priority for a website; for example, a news website may curate headlines and first paragraphs of top stories, with links to full articles. According to ''Homepage Usability'', the home page is the "most important page on any website" and receives the most views of any page. A poorly designed home page can overwhelm and deter visitors from the site. One important use of home pages is communicating the identity and value of a company.

Browser start page

When a

is launched, it will automatically open at least one

. This is the browser's start page, which is also called its home page. Start pages can be a

or a special browser page, such as

thumbnail Thumbnails are reduced-size versions of pictures or videos, used to help in recognizing and organizing them, serving the same role for images as a normal text index does for words. In the age of digital images, visual search engines and image-o ...

s of frequently visited websites. Moreover, there is a niche market of websites intended to be used solely as start pages.

References

Bibliography

* * * {{Authority control Web design

Function

Browser start page

See also

References

Bibliography