What is a Home Page?

Homepage is a popular term and we often use it. When you enter a new place, you need someone to greet you and help you navigate the surroundings, in the technology world this is known as Home Page. The home page is the initial point in the case of any website, browser, or even a desktop. In this article, we will be learning about the meaning of a Homepage exploring why homepages are required, and trying to understand different types of homepages.

What is a Homepage?

Homepage term is often used for the website’s first page which user visits when they access the website. The homepage is consists of overview of the website and provides the navigation for different services in the website. When you search for a website on the internet you get the way to it’s homepage. It is not same as a Landing page which is used for specific business needs and search engine optimization.

For example, when you type, https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/ on your web browser, it takes you to GeeksForGeeks and the webpage you see is the Home page for GeeksForGeeks. The homepage is often located at the website’s domain or subdomain, as the domain name of GeeksForGeeks is geeksforgeeks.com, the homepage is located at geeksforgeeks.org/ and the homepage is given a route as “/”.

Homepages of a website, by default, is saved as “index.html”. However, developers can choose to change the name of the homepage as they want or based on the technology used. For example, index.html, index.htm, default.html, home.html, index.php, index.jsp, index.js, etc.

What is Home Page?

Why Need a Home Page?

Home page is a crucial component of a website. It serves as a reception for the website. When a user visits the website it gives a overview of the site. Home page plays a major role in creating the first impression on the visitors. In a multipage website Home page provides navigation to other pages and with functionalities like navigation bar and search box, homepage creates an ease of use for the website. Home page is the most visited site on a website as when any user enter the website’s URL it gets the homepage. A good homepage always attract users and make them explore the website, but a poorly designed homepage can deter visitors from the site. In case of a dynamic website, Homepage provides user specific contents and updates. Organizations uses homepage to show promotional offers, important updates and other contents.

Types of Home Page

Below are some types of home page.

1. Website’s homepage

As we have discussed earlier, the homepage is usually located in the domain name or subdomain. When you enter the URL in URL bar of any web browser you are directed to the homepage of the particular website. Let’s take the example of GeeksForGeeks, and access it’s home page.

On your web browser’s URL bar type www.geeksforgeeks.org

This will take us to the GeeksForGeeks Home page shown in the picture below

• Now suppose, we go to the Jobs Section in the website, your URL looks like https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/gfg-hiring-solutions-for-recruiters/?ref=ghm
• Now to get back to the home page you simply remove everything after the first “/” and make it as https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/
• Now press ENTER and you will be redirected to the Homepage of GFG.
• Now for most of the well designed websites, you don’t need to do all these things to get back to the homepage, just click on the website’s icon shown and you will be re-directed to the Homepage of that website.

Press on the Logo

While the home page term is famous for websites we can use the term for other types of homepages.

2. Browser Homepage:

As you are defining homepage as the initial page we see when start the service, the page we see after opening a web browser is also known as a homepage. It provides search option, URL option and gives us insides about our browsing. We can see bookmarked webpages, most visited sites on the browser homepage. We can even customize the browser homepage as per our requirements. Browser homepage is used by most of us just to get out of a webpage or to visit a new site. The browser homepage provides key functionalities in one place for the browser.

Chrome Browser’s Homepage

2. Computer’s Homepage:

The homepage of computer is the desktop we see after booting in to the system. It provides different applications to access, search facility, battery status, date and time and other useful information. We usually call this home screen as “Desktop”.

Windows 11 Homepage(Desktop)

Conclusion:

Home pages are important to help users navigate through a multipage website, create a first impression for the users and provide a overview of the site. The homepage being the most visited page of the website, need to be designed with care and must be responsive for better usability. While we can use the term homepage for browser or computer’s main screen or first page, it generally refers to the website’s first page or the homepage.

Frequently Asked Questions on Home Page – FAQs

Is it homepage or home page?

While many uses “Home Page” as two words, other uses it as “homepage” as a single word. The both are same and widely used and means the first page of the website.

Is there any difference between Homepage and Landing Page?

A homepage can serve as a landing page but the reverse is not true. Homepage is the main page of the website providing navigation in the site and overview of the website. Whereas Landing page is the search engine optimized page that appears for any website. for more detail you can see https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/difference-between-landing-page-and-home-page/.

Is it important to have a homepage for website?

While it is not necessary to build a homepage, but it is a good practice to have a homepage for your website which provides an overview of your side and can help users navigate through the website.