What is a home page?

Question from a "foreigner"

[Hagstrom]

Personally I use "home page" as synonymous with "site".
When I say, "take a look at my home page" I don't mean, "stay away from all sub-pages".

I have noticed that many people use "home page" instead of index page, like in, "don't just SEO your home page, optimise every page".

The kind people at BBC great me with a, "MAKE THIS YOUR HOMEPAGE" - does this mean that I can only put my own links & other stuff on [bbc.co.uk...] - or did they give me ownership of their entire site?

[edited by: Macguru at 1:29 pm (utc) on Mar. 18, 2004]
[edit reason] Linkless URL [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]

[hannamyluv]

Homepage refers to the index page. All the rest are just pages on your site.

[Macguru]

Hi Hagstrom,

hannamyluv is right from a webmaster's perspective. From a user's point of view, when you click on links like "MAKE THIS YOUR HOMEPAGE" a script is launch to replace your default home page (mostly for IE windows) in your Internet connexion preferences. Wich mean you will end up there everytime you connect to the Internet.

[Eric_Jarvis]

I suspect the origin of the term goes way back to the beginning of the web...when it meant the page you kept your "bookmarks" on, which would generally be either the start page when using your own terminal, or the first you'd go to when using another

[Hagstrom]

Hi Eric

I took a look at the site in your profile and now I get your point.

But I would still like to make BBC's homepage my homepage. I could use a few PR9 backlinks ;)