HTTP stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol. It’s the set of rules that browsers and servers use to communicate, and it’s the “http://” you sometimes see at the start of a web address.
Every time you visit a website, your browser sends an HTTP request to a server asking for a page, and the server sends back an HTTP response with the content — HTML, images, and everything else needed to display it.
HTTP vs HTTPS
You’ll more commonly see “https://” today, which is the secure version of HTTP. The “S” stands for Secure, meaning the data sent between your browser and the website is encrypted.
Without HTTPS, information like passwords or payment details could potentially be intercepted while traveling between your device and the server. Most browsers now flag sites without HTTPS as “not secure,” which is why it’s considered essential for any modern website.
Status Codes
Part of HTTP includes status codes, which tell you what happened with a request. A code like 200 means success, 404 means the page wasn’t found, and 500 means something went wrong on the server.
You’ve probably seen a 404 error page before — that’s HTTP telling your browser the requested page doesn’t exist on that server.