Whether you head to a website directly by typing in the URL, from a bookmark, or a search engine results, there are many processes behind the scenes that you may or may not know are happening. In theory, if you aren’t aware they are happening, this usually means it’s a good experience: if you want to find a news article or the latest product, you should be able to do so with minimal fuss.

Here, Gatsboy list 5 things you didn’t realise are going on behind the scenes every time you’re browsing a website:

Every website you visit has an IP (Internet Protocol) address. Four sets of decimal numbers represent these. To make them user-friendly, they use a feature called DNS (Domain Name System). Each time you type a website such as google.co.uk, it is converted to a decimal representation. In this case, very simple, 8.8.8.8.

No doubt you are familiar with the term ‘cookie’ when on a website. The immediate purpose of this is to record usernames and passwords each time you visit for an optimal experience. But in some cases, these can be used to help determine searches that relate to your geographical location and why you may get asked if you wish to visit the UK version or a US site.

Analytics can also monitor screen dimensions to display a website suitable for your device. As mobile is such a dominant form for accessing the internet, data usage may be restricted, so some websites use AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages), which will show you an optimised version of the website that may appear different than on your computer but tweaked to load fast, thus keeping the visitor on the page longer.

Websites are built with the fundamental HTML for structuring and CSS to stylise it, but Javascript and PHP variations help interactivity. This can be anything from simple in-built surveys, forms or chat facilities to whether you are using an Apple device that serves higher-quality Retina images. If not, a different set of images will be shown, and this all happens behind the scenes without your direct input.

A vast majority of websites are hosted by CMS (Content Management Systems) such as WordPress, and these are called dynamic sites. Simpler static sites are usually things such as landing pages or a page that don’t have regular updates. They tend to be fast-loading but somewhat rigid. With the former, you may see recommendations of products or articles related to your searches as each page is stored dynamically, usually using code called PHP to serve data relevant to the page you’re visiting.