A web server is a software application that communicates between your computer or server and the internet at large.
Web servers are a critical piece of a website hosting platform — without a web server, there is no website at all.
The web server runs continuously on the computer (server) that hosts your website. It listens for requests coming from the internet, and then responds to those requests by delivering web pages, images, scripts, and other resources back to the requester.
For static pages and resources, the web server simply finds the file and sends it on to the user who wants to look at the web page or view the image. With dynamic web applications and sites like WordPress, the web server works together with a language interpreter to read PHP, run the application, and then return the output back to the user who is trying to read your blog or buy from your ecommerce store.
