index.html

---
layout: default
---

<div class="home">

  <h1>Welcome to Web Concepts!</h1>

  <p>The Web's <q>Uniform Interface</q> is based on a large and growing set of specifications. These specifications establish the <em>shared concepts</em> that everybody can build upon. One example for how this works is <a href="/specs/IETF/RFC/7234" title='RFC 7234: "Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Caching", June 2014'>HTTP/1.1 Caching</a>, which defines <a href="/specs/IETF/RFC/7234#http-header">5 HTTP Header Fields</a>, <a href="/specs/IETF/RFC/7234#http-warn-code">7 HTTP Warn Codes</a>, and <a href="/specs/IETF/RFC/7234#http-cache-directive">12 HTTP Cache Directives</a>.</p>

  <p><em>Web Concepts</em> is an overview of these <a href="concepts">concepts</a> and of the <a href="specs">specifications defining them</a>. Web Concepts provides a structured and interlinked overview of the many concepts that together establish the <q>Web surface</q>.</p>

  <p>The best way to explore <em>Web Concepts</em> is to use one of these starting points:</p>

  <ul>
    <li>Read the <a href="/update/2018/04/26/web-concepts-www2018.html">paper "Surfing the API Web: Web Concepts" published at the 27th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW2018)</a></li>
    <li>Explore the <a href="concepts">Concepts</a>, currently listing {% include concepts.md %} (<a href="/concepts.json" title="JSON representation of all Web Concepts and their values">JSON</a>)</li>
    <li>Explore the <a href="specs">Specifications</a>, currently listing {% include specs.md %} (<a href="/specs.json" title="JSON representation of all Web Concept specifications">JSON</a>)</li>
  </ul>

  <p><em>Web Concepts</em> is <a href="https://github.com/dret/webconcepts">openly managed on GitHub</a>; feel free to fork, contribute, comment, or <a href="https://github.com/dret/webconcepts/issues">raise issues</a>. The site is generated from structured information representing the individual specifications, with the build process currently being based on <a href="transform.xsl">XSLT</a> and Jekyll. If you are just interested in the data, <a href="JSON">read about the JSON representations of Web Concepts</a>.</p>

  <h1 class="page-heading">Recent Updates</h1>

  <ul>
    {% for post in site.posts limit:5 %}
      <li>
        <a href="{{ post.url | prepend: site.baseurl }}">{{ post.date | date: "%b %-d, %Y" }}: {{ post.title }}</a>
      </li>
    {% endfor %}
  </ul>

  <p class="rss-subscribe">For a complete list, <a href="{{ "/history.html" | prepend: site.baseurl }}">here is the history of all updates</a>; you can subscribe to updates <a href="{{ "/feed.xml" | prepend: site.baseurl }}">via the feed</a>.</p>

</div>