How Websites Work

In October 2026 two critical flaws in PHP, the language behind most websites, sent governments, Wikipedia’s operator and news sites scrambling to patch. To see why, this film follows one page from your screen to a distant server and back: the web’s birth at CERN, clients and servers, the DNS address book, the HTTP conversation, packets, pages built to order by languages like PHP, and what a vulnerability, a CVE number and a patch really are. Send a request, lose a packet, build a page and patch a server.

A letter to a distant machine

Why one flaw made websites switch themselves off.

A web of documents

The web began as a way to share papers.

Finding the machine

Two computers, one conversation.

The conversation

A short letter and a numbered reply.

Pages made to order

Many pages do not exist until you ask.

When input becomes instruction

What a vulnerability really is.

A client asks, a server answers

The web still works the way it did in 1990.

Read the full story as text · อ่านภาษาไทย

This interactive 3D film needs JavaScript. PlanetPast home