What Is Web 1.0?

Date First Published: 7th October 2022

Article Type: Computer Terms & Definitions

Difficulty: Medium

Difficulty Level: 5/10

Learn more about what Web 1.0 is in this article.

Web 1.0 is the original version of the World Wide Web that only consists of read-only data as it lacks the forms, controls, and interactivity that users enjoy on the World Wide Web today. It refers to the first and earliest stage of development on the World Wide Web where websites, hosted on ISP-run web servers or free web hosting services, such as Tripod, were simple and static, mostly focused on text and hyperlinks, and did not allow users to alter any elements of the webpage or post any user-generated content.

In Web 1.0, which was in common use around 1991 to 2004, information was accessed in a passive way. Pages were built using SSI (Server Side Includes) and Common Gateway Interface (CGI) instead of dynamic programming languages, such as PHP, Perl, Python, or Ruby. The advantage of Web 1.0 is that pages were much simpler to create, but it was harder to maintain larger websites due to the lack of dynamic content.

HTML forms were sent through email and support for server-side scripting was rare on shared servers during this time, meaning that information was accessed from a filesystem rather than an RDBMS (Relational Database Management System). Instead, mailto forms were used to provide a feedback mechanism for visitors where a user would fill out a form and after clicking on the submit button, their email client would open and try to send an email containing the details entered into the form. Email clients were developed that could be opened into web browsers due to the popularity of the mailto protocol. Web 2.0 is the successor to Web 1.0 which enables user-generated content, such as reviews, forums, uploaded content, and social networking.