Classification of websites by Purpose

There is a purpose for creating any website or websites. The purpose determines its contents and the type of information that displayed on the site.  While there are reasons for creating a website and are inexhaustible, when classifying websites according to its purpose, you have websites like

• Information websites
• Internet portals
• Web2.0 sites:
• Commercial and Non-commercial sites

Information websites

Information websites are dedicated for providing information. The information can be provided for free or the user/visitor may pay for it. Nearly every website provides some kind of information and it may not the wrong to look at all websites as information website primarily. The information can be in the form of text, pictures, audios and videos. For example, most company’s website is designed to showcase their services, history, promote their products, display vacancies, contact details and any other important that will attract business.

1. Site-business Cards

   Another kind of information websites is sites-business cards. They are usually developed for companies or individuals and contain a summary of the activities of the company or the person being introduced. They serve as portfolio where samples of peoples works, products and services offered are displayed sometimes with rates.  These are like classified directories and/or yellow pages websites that lists the businesses, persons, companies, product and services in classifies categories. Some has internal search engine capability that helps visitors to locate the information they are looking for quickly and easily.  Some examples  are www.vconnect,com.ng, www.novten.com.ng.

2. News-Portals

   Typically, information websites mainly provide information about an industry or many industries and niches and they provide information like news, politics, weather, flight schedule, traffic report, TV guides, events, music, sports, stock, and so on which are update regularly. Most websites owned by newspaper publishing companies, radio and television houses, magazines,   like www.punchng.com,  www.channelstv.com , www.cnn.com are common examples.  These are generally called news-portals.

3. Promotional websites

   If the information site is dedicated to advertising or promoting products and services then it can be called an advertisement or promotional website. Some of these promotional sites are created at the time of promotion or campaign and they are discarded after the promotion. A good examples of this type of websites are the websites used for political campaigns, like www.goodluck.org.ng, www.Obamabiden.com

4. On-line journals

   These are websites that are characterized by constant update of information, news and articles on a particular topic. Some of them are online dictionaries, journals and encyclopedias. Example is www.wikipedia.com.

5. Blogs and online diaries

   There are many ways to describe a blog. Generally, a blog is a regularly updated website consisting of entries ( called post) appearing in reverse chronological order with the most recent entry appearing first (similar in format to a daily journal) (Source: http://weblogs.about.com ). Blogs typically include features such as comments and links to increase user interactivity. There are some one webpage blogs and they provide information about the thought in the mind of the owner and other presents specific information on issues, technical fields and so on. The content of blog types of information website can vary widely. Examples of blog websites are www.fibs.com.ng, www.ikeji.com,

 Internet portals

Generally, a portal is a gateway to another world or websites. They expand the awareness of these websites. There are basically two types of portals: Internet portal and Enterprise portal.

1. Internet Portal

   An internet portal or web portal is a website that provided by internet access providers (browsers) as a starting website for a user when they go into the internet. The browser provides access to the internet and the portal is the default or starting website that the browser shows to the user. Most web portals contains information from various sources that people look for  and  include links to most common websites that people like to visit. They are mainly built around facilities for searching the net.  They provide a lot of information on stock quotes, weather, news phones , maps and online shopping mall. Also, they provide resources for offering services like email, search engines, community forum, advertising and ability for users to customize their interface or create a site that is personalized for individual interest.  They are mainly owned by companies that has search engine. Some examples are www.google.com, www.yahoo.com, www.mysearch.avg.com, www.aol.com, and so on. Internet portals attract high traffic and visitors. Portals like Google, Yahoo, Excite, Netscape, CNE and AOL are general portals because they provide general information.  Some portals like Fool.com and searchnetworking.com are specialized portals that cover a niche area. Fool.com is for investors while Searchnetworking.com is for network administrators.

2. Enterprise Portal:This is a Web-based interface for users of enterprise applications. Enterprise portals also provide access to enterprise information such as corporate databases, applications (including Web applications), and systems. ( source: http://www.webopedia.com).

 There are many kinds of enterprise websites and their classification is based on the purpose of the site which defines the type of applications that is running there. A common examples of this kind of portal is recruitment and jobs websites like www.jobberman.com  that allows companies and individuals to advertise for jobs, enable jobseekers to drop their resume and apply for jobs.

Many companies have online shops/stores that are designed to receive and process orders for purchasing goods on line like www.konga.com.ng. Some companies like Amazon (www.amazon.com) only have online stories without any brick-and –mortar shop. All their transaction buying, selling and payments are done online.  These websites are basically running  ecommerce software that can be integrated with payment gateways like www.paypal.com  or www.moneybookers.com or www.quickteller.com for receiving payments for their sales. These payment gateways tool are portals.

Most banks now their portal that provide some financial services like internet banking, account opening, money transfer, payment of bills, and so on. There are many e-learning portals that provide online course in the internet and they are running e-learning course management systems like Moodle. Some examples are www.firstplus.org.com, www.khanacademy.org and so on.  There are many portals providing different kinds of services like travelling, hotel and flight reservations and payments, matrimony and so on.

Web2.0 web sites

Originally, websites in the internet was a place to locate, read and download information, thus the web was a “Read Only Web” at least from the perspective of the visitor.  As the internet continues to develop, web application and website are now being designed to allow visitors to write, collaborate and share information. As today, the web is a “Read/Write Web”.

So Web2.0 is a collective term for certain web applications of the internet and the World Wide Web (www) that allows users to create, collaborate, edit and share user-generated content online. It is an approach to web application developments that is turning websites to becoming more dynamic. It is more like a transition from developing websites with static HTML webpages to a more dynamic webpages with some service web applications embedded in the websites. It describes the changing trends in the use of World Wide Web technology and Web design that aim at enhance creativity, secure information sharing, increase collaboration, and improve the functionality of the Web as we know it.

The social nature of Web 2.0 have led to the creation of social media websites that have features for enabling  individual/groups/community-based input, interaction, interactive content-sharing and participatory collaboration.  Web 2.0 Websites typically include some of the following features/techniques:

• Search: the ease of finding information through keyword searching.
• Links: guides to important pieces of information. The best pages are the most frequently linked to.
• Authoring: the ability to create constantly updating content that is co-created by users. In wikis, editing the webpage content is iterative to the pint that people can undo and redo each other’s work while in blogs, it is cumulative in that posts and comments of individuals are accumulated over time.
• Tags: categorization of content by creating tags that are simple, one-word descriptions to facilitate searching and avoid having to fit into rigid, pre-made categories.
• Extensions: automation of pattern matching for customization by using algorithms.
• Signals: the use of RSS (Real Simple Syndication) technology to create a subscription model which notifies users of any content changes. do and redo each other’s work.

The Web2.0 websites include forums, file sharing sites,  social networking and wikis.

1. Wikis: Websites that enable users to contribute, collaborate and edit site content. www.wikipedia.com is one of the oldest and best-known wiki-based sites.
2. Forum: An Internet forum is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. Chat rooms are like forums but the messages in forums are longer that chat rooms and some forum may require that the message be approved by a moderator before it is visible to other members depending on the setup. Forum types of web sites serve as platforms and promote interactions amongst the users. Unless specifically blocked and requiring a special invitation, you can join any forum on the web. Most forums cater to a specific industry or a field. An example of a forum website is www.IHateButterflies.com. Most Web2.0 websites implement forum and chat room as features in their website and not necessarily as a website. Forums on web sites, typically, contain categories that further narrow down the subject. Registered users can post questions or start a topic which other users can reply or add to. A lot of valuable information and knowledge exists in online forums.
3. File Sharing websites: As internet speeds have increased and more and more people are using broadband connections, the importance of file sharing types of web sites has grown. This websites are mainly rooted on cloud computing technology and stores a lot of files like photos, music (even full albums) and video (entire movies).  Some contained installed software application (webapps)  that can be leased or purchased. ). These web sites offer these services both for free and purchase.  Thus the increasing prevalence of Software as a Service (SaaS), webapps and cloud-computing rather than locally-installed programs and services is the driving force. Due to the large size and volume  of these file , some of them provide some search engine features to assist users to locate files based on some query. Some common examples are www.megaupload,com  and www.rapidshare.com, www.loadingvault.com . The purpose of these web sites can be varied – information storage, communication etc. Sites like Youtube,Flickr.com, Google docs, del.icio.us fall into this category.
4. Social networking Sites: These are web2.0 websites that allows people to connect with each other, share resources and facilitates the creation of communities. They enable users to create public profiles within that Web site and form relationships with other users of the same Web site who access their profile. They allow users to create social media content and interact with each other around the content. The also include features like online discussions forums, chat rooms and other social spaces online. Some common Social networking sites include www.facebook.com, www.twitter.com, www.linkedln.com and www.myspace.com. Dating web sites have grown over the years and now offer services quite similar to those of social networking (the idea is basically the same) hence they are a good fit in this category.

 Commercial  and non-commercial websites

Based on purpose, the websites can also be classified as commercial websites or non-commercial websites.  Commercial websites are websites that the owner wants to make money or get profit from it. Thus the owner charges for some services rendered at the site.   While, non-commercial websites are websites that the owner has no purpose of getting money or profit from it.  Some examples are government sites, organizational sites, blogs, directories, and websites of educational organizations.

Conclusion

The aim of this write-up is to describe what website is and attempt to classify using some criteria like type of webpages, domain name extension, ownership and purpose as non-technical as possible. The main features and functions of different types of websites were presented. Here, a website was described  “as a collection of web pages about an entity that are hosted as a domain in a web server  in the internet and access through a browser”.

There are many criteria that can be used to classify websites which may include content and features.  In this write-up, we have tries to classify websites based on types of webpage, domain name extension, ownership and purpose because a website must have at least a webpage, an owner, a purpose for its creation and registered in a registry with a domain name extension.

From above, it is quite easy to classify websites using webpage type, domain name extension and ownership than based on purpose because the aim of the owner may be very broad; and therefore may have many features and diverse contents.  However, the content of a website depends on the purpose. The owner of a can change its content, purpose and features at any time, thus the purpose and contents can vary considerably. Based on these variations, it is difficult to classify websites into distinct categories based on purpose. As seen above, there are overlaps to varying degrees.

Thank you very much.

Augustus Zekaryah

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Presented below is a list of other articles on websites that might be of interest to you.

1. What is a website?
2. Classification of websites by types of webpages
3. Classification of websites by domain name extension
4. Classification of websites by ownership

As you read them drop a comment because your feedback is very important to us. It will help us to improve. Regards…