TYPES OF WEBSITES

Types of Websites

• Websites can be categorized according to their purpose

• There are basically 7 different types of websites

Business/Marketing Sites

• Websites whose purpose it is to advertise a business (and ultimately sell their product or service)

Examples of Business/Marketing Sites

• www.homedepot.ca• www.bestbuy.ca• www.adidas.com

Reference/Informational Sites

• Websites whose purpose it is to inform or educate the visitor about a particular topic

Examples of Reference/Informational Sites

• www.webopedia.com• www.dictionary.com• www.wikipedia.org• www.socialmoms.net

Professional Sites

• Maintained by institutions/organizations for their members, but often also include public access components containing articles, research, fact sheets, etc.

Examples of Professional Sites

• www.oct.ca• www.cica.ca• www.cpso.on.ca• ona.org

Entertainment Sites

• Websites whose purpose it is to entertain the visitors

Examples of Entertainment Sites

• www.rubberfaces.com• www.optillusions.com• www.candystand.com• www.coolmath-games.com

News Sites

• Websites whose purpose it is to provide information about local, national and international news events

Examples of News Sites

• www.thestar.com• www.torontosun.com• www.cbc.ca

Advocacy Sites

• Websites whose purpose it is to support a certain cause

Examples of Advocacy Sites

• www.peta.org• www.povnet.org• www.aidslaw.ca• www.terryfox.org

Personal Websites

• Websites that are maintained by individuals from anywhere in the world for a variety of reasons

Examples of Personal Sites

• Are numerous and varied• www.freewebs.com• www.weebly.com

Evaluating Web Resources

• Search engines often yield hundreds of results

• Your particular results can can include such varied findings as; people’s personal websites or websites published by experts and scholars

Evaluating Web Resources

• Remember, anyone can publish information to the web

• There is no system in place prevent unwanted or erroneous information

• In the “old days”, people mostly referred to traditional print resources when searching for information

Evaluating Web Resources

• Magazines, newspapers, book publishers (e.g. encyclopedias), journals, etc. are common examples

• These types of publications made use of editors, fact-checkers and peer-reviewers to help ensure accuracy

Evaluating Web Resources

• When you went to the library to retrieve one of these resources, there was no real question as to the validity of the resources

• Because of the nature of the Internet, you cannot always rely on what you are reading

Evaluating Web Resources

• As a results you must become familiar with various things to look for when evaluating the quality of a web resources