A website is a collection of mostly HTML-pages (Hyper-Text Markup Language) and other files that offers text, pictures, but nowadays also audio and video, that are hosted by a server. This is the part of the internet know as The Web. WWW, or The World Wide Web is the name of all websites together. So, The Web is not just a synonym for the internet in general. Websites are accessed through an URL (Uniform Resource Locator) or address for each individual webpage and file on the WWW.
There are basically two flavours of websites:
Some websites websites consists of files stored as they are seen by the person who visits the webpage, who has no influence on the content of the website, the maintainer of the website would actually have to change the files on the server individually and specifically to change the website's content. These are called static. Many websites are dynamic, where files are stored differently to make it easier for the websmaster or webteam to update the information. For example news websites that constantly needs updating, or webpages where visitors can interact by responding to or adding to the content of a page. Like this one, for example. The rise in dynamic websites have brought about the arrival of what we call web 2.0.
Web 2.0 (although some would argue that we're already on 3.0) has changed the internet a lot. Interactivity is key and static information providing websites are no longer the norm. Almost every website you visit nowadays asks you to respond to articles, upload pictures, add videos (YOUTUBE!!!) or discuss things in web-fora. Forming some sort of online-community, or indeed, an imagined community. Even websites that do not allow this sort of interaction often do still allow you to sign-up/log in and change the website's appearance and spacing to suit your own preferences. People's online persona, can often be quite different from their real-life persona as the internet allows them to basically present themselves however they want themselves to be seen.
I personally use the internet all the time. For all sorts of things, research, entertainment (again, Youtube, but also things like iPlayer and 4OD), to find news or to indeed respond and discuss things on web-fora. And let's not forget that websites like Myspace and Facebook, who tend to pretty much rule the average student's life, are also web-based and are pretty much taking this whole online-community thing to the next level.
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