<P> A web server is a computer system that processes requests via HTTP, the basic network protocol used to distribute information on the World Wide Web . The term can refer to the entire system, or specifically to the software that accepts and supervises the HTTP requests . </P> <P> The primary function of web server is to store, process and deliver web pages to clients . The communication between client and server takes place using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). Pages delivered are most frequently HTML documents, which may include images, style sheets and scripts in addition to the text content . </P> <P> A user agent, commonly a web browser or web crawler, initiates communication by making a request for a specific resource using HTTP and the server responds with the content of that resource or an error message if unable to do so . The resource is typically a real file on the server's secondary storage, but this is not necessarily the case and depends on how the web server is implemented . </P> <P> While the primary function is to serve content, a full implementation of HTTP also includes ways of receiving content from clients . This feature is used for submitting web forms, including uploading of files . </P>

Who reads the file stored on web servers